
Class -^dulLLJLL 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH 



BEING 



A CONSIDERATION OF THE GROUNDS OF 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF, AND ESPECIALLY 
OF THE EVIDENCES OF DIVINE 
REVELATION IN THE RELI- 
GION OF THE BIBLE 



BY j/e/^ODBEY, D.D, 



Nashville, Tenn. ; Dallas, Tex. 

Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South 

Bigham & Smith, Agents 

1903 



o\ 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 


Two Copies 


Received 


APR 4 


1903 


Copyright 


Entry 


-. 1 _ 
CLASS ^ 


XXc No. 


COPY 


D 

B. 



Copyright, 190a, 

BY 
J. E. GODBEY. 



• 1 t 



' , « ' 



To HHs flfife, mam, 

WHOSE LOVE HAS LIGHTENED ALL MY CARES, 

AND WH^SB SYMPATHY HAS STRENGTHENED ME IN EVERY 

GOOD PURPOSE AND WORK. 



PREFACE. 

One who ascends a mountain sees the landscape 
below changing on his view from every new point of 
observation. The general features of forest and field, 
river and plain, are much the same, but the outlines 
of the picture are changed. The horizon falls further 
away ; new mountains show their misty tops, and new 
realms come faintly into view. Meantime objects near 
at hand appear to change in relative importance ; some 
that were conspicuous sink out of sight, and others, 
which they for a time concealed, stand out in bold pro- 
file. 

Increasing knowledge furnishes to each succeeding 
generation a new view point from which to contem- 
plate religion, natural or revealed. In this change of 
view we still recognize the old staple supports of faith 
— arguments which will forever stand firm from age to 
age ; but new truths also come into view, and the old 
arguments give new suggestions. They change in 
their relative value when viewed through a changed 
perspective. 

To-day discoveries in archaeology are throwing light 
upon the religious faith of our race before the days of 
Moses or Abraham. The researches of historic criti- 
cism, while often announcing conclusions which are 
hasty and ill-sustained, are also giving suggestions 
which the sincere and patient searcher after truth must 
respect 

(v) 



vi Preface. 

To-day skepticism gathers what strength it can 
from any new facts which are accepted, or new theo- 
ries which are prevalent. The citadel of Christian 
faith is attacked with new weapons and by new meth- 
ods. If these attacks do not imperil the faith of the 
man who has found experience an unassailable and ir- 
refutable argument for his trust in Christ, they are 
perilous to those who are occupied still about doctrines 
and theories and external evidences of Christianity, 
who are lingering in the outer court of the temple, 
and have not entered into the most holy place where 
the divine glory is directly revealed. 

For these reasons there is needed, from time to 
time, a restatement of Christian evidences, such as, re- 
garding any new truths which the researches of men 
have brought to light, and dealing fairly with preva- 
lent phases of doubt, may serve the need of intelligent 
faith. 

The Bible must be kept open to all the light which 
can be thrown upon it. Traditional faith, handed 
down through the Jewish and the Christian Church, 
is worthy of the highest veneration, and of itself 
must be held as an evidence of truth, next to demon- 
stration. But the historic critic must not be ruled out 
of court without a hearing. 

In these pages the writer sets forth the arguments 
which justify the Christian faith in his own mind, 
humbly desiring to contribute something to the de- 
fense of the truth. 

Little Rock, Ark., August 30, 1902. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. PAGE 

Relation of Reason and Faith i 

CHAPTER II. 
The Existence of God — Belief in God Essential to 
Philosophy 8 

CHAPTER III. 
The Existence of God — Belief in God Essential to 
Morals , . 16 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Existence of God — The Cosmological Argument. 22 

CHAPTER V. 
The Existence of God — The Teleological Argument. 31 

CHAPTER VI. 
Revelation — Presumptive Evidence 41 

CHAPTER VII. 
Miracles 51 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Inspiration and Revelation , 61 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Bible — The Records and the Writers 75 

CHAPTER X. 
The Bible — The Records and the Writers 99 

(vii) 



viii Contents. 

CHAPTER XI. Page 

The Claims and Methods of the Prophets 115 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Testimony of Prophecy 125 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Doom of Israel's Foes 141 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Chastisements of God's People 159 

CHAPTER XV. 
Messianic Prophecies 170 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Divine Incarnation 184 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Jesus of Nazareth an Historic Character 195 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Jesus of Nazareth — His Claims 200 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Christ of the Gospels 209 

CHAPTER XX. 
Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection 238 

CHAPTER XXI. 
The Fulfillment of Our Hopes 252 



FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH. 



CHAPTER I. 

Relation of Reason and Faith. 

The great truths which we hold, relating to the 
interests and issues of life, none of us have discov- 
ered for ourselves. We have received them upon 
the statement of others, and by faith in them; yet 
this faith is not without justification in reason. 
Our teachers were wiser than we; they were sin- 
cere, and their disposition toward us was kind. 
Our faith in them was, therefore, reasonable. It 
would have been unreasonable not to have be- 
lieved. 

But the truths which we have accepted by faith 
in others were not originally so received. They 
were the discoveries of research, the conclusions of 
logic, the lessons of experience. They had their 
proofs, and if we could know that any of them were 
without proofs in the minds of those who have 
taught them to us, we would now cast them away 
as things which none are authorized to believe or 
teach. 

Faith, then, is only legitimate when it has its 
evidences in reason. The immediate ground of 
faith to us may be the authority of the teacher, but 

(0 



2 Foundations of Faith. 

the final, sufficient, and permanent foundation must 
be in truths which are well established, in things 
which lie within the range of certain knowledge. 

In the development of our minds we seek, nat- 
urally, the ultimate foundations of belief in the 
knowledge of those truths by which belief was 
primarily established; we seek to pass beyond the 
mere word of the teacher to examine for ourselves 
the grounds of the teacher's authority. In short, 
if we seek to be teachers of truth, we must be pre- 
pared with evidences to sustain the doctrines we 
teach. 

There comes a time when those who have been 
nurtured in the Christian faith, and who have re- 
ceived much upon the authority of the Church and 
the word of Christian parents and teachers, must 
propose for themselves to take this step; to exam- 
ine the grounds of their faith; to pass beyond the 
authority of any mere statement of religious truth, 
from whatever source, and demand the reasons 
which justify such statements. This they must 
do if they would make their faith, in the best sense, 
a personal conviction, and be prepared to teach it 
to others or to defend it when opposed. 

To enter upon the study of Christian evidences 
is, of itself, to confess the supremacy of reason in 
matters of religious belief. It is, in short, to sum- 
mon our faith in Christ before the bar of reason to 
justify its existence and its claims. 

Man has no higher duty than to exercise his rea- 
son diligently and sincerely, that he may know 



Relation of Reason and Raith. 3 

what should be the character of his conduct and 
the supreme aim of his life. 

He who believes in the existence of God cannot 
believe that he has created us without a purpose, 
nor can he think that we may find our chief good 
in disregarding that purpose. The truth is ax- 
iomatic, that to "fear God and keep his command- 
ments is the whole duty of man." 

But if one would make the will of God the rule 
of his life, he must study the revelations of that will 
in his own moral instincts, in the order of nature, 
and in those truths that have been verified in the 
common experience of our race. 

If there be any revelation of the divine will sep- 
arate and distinct from this, and coming to us 
through supernatural agencies, it must still be test- 
ed by the light which comes from natural sources. 
A special revelation may give us truths which the 
volume of nature does not unfold, but it must still 
be in harmony with nature's teachings. It may 
bring to us truths which reason could never discov- 
er, and yet it must not contradict that which rea- 
son has discovered or experience attested. 

Reason has authority, therefore, to examine 
that which claims to be a supernatural revelation 
from God, and to accept or reject the claim as 
the evidence may justify. Indeed, to make such 
examination is the bounden duty of every seeker 
after truth. It is only by such an examination 
that a strong and sincere faith can be established. 

If it be objected that this view leaves divine rev- 



4 Foundations of Faith. 

elation to be judged by human reason, we only an- 
swer that there must be within us power and 
authority to judge, else there can be no judgment; 
and if no judgment, no conviction and no faith. 
We take the ground, unequivocally, that there can 
be no faith contrary to reason. Your faith may 
be at some points contrary to my reason, or my 
faith may be contrary to your reason, and the faith 
of us both contrary to right reason; yet we main- 
tain, without the slightest misgiving, that in each 
individual mind faith and reason must be in har- 
mony, and that no man can believe what his own 
reason contradicts. 

That we may not be misunderstood at this vi- 
tal point, we grant that spiritual life has its own 
testimony of spiritual things; that it passes into 
realms of experience all its own; and that what 
appears to the carnal man a faith against reason 
may be, in truth, a faith based upon a higher rea- 
son than he has attained to. As the astronomer 
has conceptions of the universe which are beyond 
the thoughts of the clown, so to the mind that 
is wont to contemplate spiritual things, and to 
the moral nature prepared for the highest spiritual 
experiences, truths appear which lie beyond the 
faith of such as lead an earthly, sensuous life. Thus 
it is that God manifests himself to his own as he 
doth not unto the world. 

Faith reaches beyond all the demonstrations of 
reason. It is the outlook of reason from that little 
territory which she has been able to compass to 



Relation of Reason and Faith. 5 

the boundless realm of truth beyond. In order to 
be assured of a thing as existing, it is not necessary 
to take its measure or determine its distance. 
Faith apprehends that which is too vast to be 
bounded and too shadowy to be defined. It looks 
at the spiritual and the infinite as men look upon 
the dim outline of a great continent seen far 
across a channel or strait ; and some are confident, 
and some doubt, and some declare that they can- 
not see anything at all. But the indistinctness is 
not vagueness; it is orly distance, and the cloud is 
in the eye of him tha^ doubts, and does not wrap 
that distant shore. Men of stronger vision catch 
a view — a faint and far-off view, but it is enough 
for assurance. If challenged, they could not de- 
fine clearly between theAlue of the ocean and the 
mountain coast, and even their proofs would not 
serve dimmer eyes than their own; and yet they 
know, beyond a peradventure, that land is there. 
Their assurance has its substantial evidences, and 
those evidences are based on experiences of things 
more defined and objects nearer at hand. They 
have looked upon the mountain range, which an 
inexperienced eye would have mistaken for a cloud 
bank, and they have marked and studied the per- 
spective of distance. They have grown accus- 
tomed to viewing objects at sea. From jutting 
headlands, or the decks of ships, they have seen 
the island coast and the outline of the promontory. 
They see and know. They are assured, but cannot 
convey to others fully the evidences which satisfy 



6 Foundations of Faith. 

themselves. They know for themselves and not 
for another. 

Such is faith, and such its relation to things 
which we are wont to say are known because they 
can be verified. It will be seen that the legitimacy 
of faith is to be tested by things known. There 
must be a harmony between that which is believed 
and that which can be proved. 

We have a certain range of knowledge which 
comes to us through our natural capacities and the 
objects of nature about us. This knowledge a di- 
vine revelation cannot disregard. Indeed, we can 
only feel the authority of such revelation when we 
find that what it reveals is so linked in harmony 
with what we know that we cannot neglect the 
teaching of this revelation without our own intel- 
lectual confusion, and without rejecting the very 
basis of knowledge. 

Our unaided sight makes us familiar with many 
things. But there are worlds of which we would 
scarcely dream without the telescope or micro- 
scope. One who has no .knowledge of the micro- 
scope or the wonders it reveals will laugh at the 
thought that there are myriads of living creatures 
in the sparkling water-drop. He holds the clear 
water in the sunlight, he tests it with his eye, and 
says, "They are not there." But you adjust the 
microscope, and bid him look. He sees now the 
myriad life. Will he say, "This is a delusion; I will 
not believe that this glass brings me a new revela- 
tion"? You will show him then that this glass is 



Relation of Reason and Faith. 7 

constructed with strict regard to the laws of see- 
ing. You will show him that it does not distort 
vision, but aids it. Now, since the laws of seeing 
are not violated by this instrument, you will show 
him that he must accept its revelations or disbe- 
lieve those laws. If he does the latter, he is com- 
pelled to go back upon all that his natural sight 
has shown to him, and to distrust it. Then is he 
plunged into utter skepticism, and compelled, in 
order to deny the microscope, to deny the testi- 
mony of his unaided senses. 

Such are the relations which must subsist be- 
tween natural and revealed religion. We must 
find, as the only sufficient reason for believing the 
Bible, that we cannot logically disbelieve it, and 
that we cannot reject its doctrines and teachings 
without our own utter confusion in regard to the 
conditions of knowledge and our conceptions of 
moral truth. 

These suggestions will indicate the method of 
our inquiry. 



CHAPTER II. 

Existence of God — Belief in God Essential 
to Philosophy. 

To begin to reason assumes some unquestioned 
truths by which reason must be guided. It is in 
vain that we draw out the links of logic with hope 
to reach and bind any conclusion if the hither end 
of the chain be not fastened. 

Mathematics must have its axioms, and so must 
philosophy; and these axioms the mind must sup- 
ply out of itself. These axioms of reason we call 
intuitive ideas. These ideas which we call intuitive 
are the ideas of causation, eternity, infinity, and the 
absolute. 

We do not insist that these ideas, or any defined 
ideas, exist in the mind of a child at its birth. 
Neither will we deny that it is the function of the 
senses to awaken the mind to action. Perhaps 
without some sort of sensation even self-conscious- 
ness would not be reached. Sensation gives us 
facts of the outer world, but the mind supplies out 
of its own endowment truths in respect to which all 
facts must be considered, and furnishes thus the laws 
of thought by which the material furnished by sen- 
sation is taken up and made to conduct to conclu- 
sions, the result of reflection and reason. If we had 
naught but sensation, the mind would receive pas- 
sively, as a mirror, the ever-fleeting reflections of 
(8) 



Existence of God. 9 

outer objects, but would be taught no lessons, and 
could form no theories or systems of thought, and 
reach no conclusions. The mind is furnished in its 
own endowment with the power of reasoning from 
the facts which sense reveals. 

That any truth may be accepted as intuitive, it 
must be such as is born in the first labor of hu- 
man thought, always present and necessary in our 
thinking, and so, uniform and universal in the proc- 
esses of human reasoning. 

We have said causation, eternity, infinity, and 
the absolute are intuitive ideas. It is impossible to 
separate from our thought of things the idea of 
cause. Reason proceeds upon that idea, and upon 
it only can proceed, whether we move forward or 
backward, considering what will result from things 
we see or what they have resulted from. Nothing 
which we behold is taken, or can be taken, to be 
original and uncaused. Reason seeks the cause of 
things; and accepting all that now appears as both 
result and secondary cause, it also, upon the idea of 
causation, seeks the consequences of things. 

Again, things transpire in time. But limit to 
time is inconceivable. Whatever duration is meas- 
ured, it cannot be thought of as the beginning or 
end of time. We think of the beginning and end 
of life, the beginning and end of worlds. Time, as 
the measure of a certain order of events, has begin- 
ning and end. So, at the consummation and close 
of a dispensation the seer of Patmos heard an 
angel cry, "Time shall be no more!" But before 



IO Foundations of Faith. 

this earth existed eternity was, and beyond eterni- 
ty. It is impossible to think otherwise. 

We see things in space, but we can no more limit 
space than time. We extend the material until we 
contemplate worlds from which the swift messen- 
ger, light, requires thousands of years to reach our 
earth. Then thought doubles and trebles the dis- 
tance, and deems itself no nearer the bound of 
space. Since space bounds all things, we can only 
think of space as bounded by space. Therefore 
that space should have limits is unthinkable. 

So of the absolute. We cannot contemplate any 
excellence without the thought of the more excel- 
lent. Power under any limitations suggests great- 
er power; goodness under any limitations suggests 
greater goodness. From the conditioned thought 
flies forward to the unconditioned, and recognizing 
the wise, the good, the strong, reckons that these 
have their fountain in the all-wise, the all-good, 
the almighty, the absolutely perfect. 

It can hardty be allowed that in order to be ac- 
cepted as intuitive these ideas should always be 
logically confessed in every system. A false reason- 
ing may deny the only premises upon which rea- 
son can build, and so end in annulling reason itself. 
Agnosticism is not philosophy, but the denial that 
philosophy is possible; it is not reason, but the dis- 
trust of reason which accepts no conclusion. In 
order to justify itself, it must prove that nothing 
can be proved. It is not the normal condition of 
any mind, but a perversion of mind. 



Existence of God. n 

We return to the idea of causation, and state 
that this idea of cause, which is inseparable from all 
processes of thought, is the root idea of a God, a 
great First Cause, Creator and Ruler of the world. 
This idea of a God has been conspicuous in all the 
history and development of human thought. The 
idea of causation has clothed itself with personal 
atributes and powers according to the capacity of 
the human mind in its various stages of develop- 
ment where no light of divine revelation shone. 
It is therefore often stated that the idea of God is 
intuitive, and the statement is often contradicted. 
But certainly no one would speak of the idea of 
God, as revelation gives it, or as philosophy has de- 
veloped it, as intuitive. Such a statement could not 
be made to include anything which has been added 
by logical development or revelation to the orig- 
inal and essential idea of cause. To say, on the 
other hand, that the very existence of the atheist 
and the infidel refutes the idea that the thought of 
God is intuitive, is to misrepresent the claim. The 
refutation to be valid must be directed against the 
root idea of causation, and it must show us a mind 
with normal capacity and development in which 
that idea of cause has not arisen or is not accepted. 

The idea of a great First Cause has no history in 
human thought. It has no history in the individual 
mind. Atheism has never been found to be the 
natural or normal attitude of human intelligence. 
As to the root idea of God in causation, none have 
been found originally denying it, nor can it logical- 



12 Foundations of Faith. 

ly be denied; and, as we have seen that the idea of 
cause has always clothed itself with personality in 
the mind of man in his primitive state, and that 
besides this the ideas of the infinite, the eternal, and 
the absolute are fundamental in human thought, 
we may safely say that the idea of God is intuitive 
— not the God of revelation, or of philosophy, 
for all ideas of God are less than the true and 
perfect — but the germ idea of an intelligent Agent, 
enthroned over the powers of nature and the desti- 
ny of man. Luthardt rightly declares: "An intui- 
tive conviction of God dwells in the human mind. 
We can by no means free ourselves of the notion of 
a God. We cannot think of ourselves, we cannot 
think of the world, without involuntarily connect- 
ing therewith the idea of God. Our thoughts 
hasten past the visible and the finite toward a su- 
preme, invisible, infinite Being, and cannot rest till 
they have attained this goal. We are obliged to 
think of God. Consciousness of God is as essential 
an element of our mind as self-consciousness. 

But primary truths, furnished by intuition, must 
bear the test of logic. They must be found to be in 
harmony with legitimate conclusions drawn from 
any premise established, or any facts which reason 
can accept as such. Not capable of direct demon- 
stration, they must still be incapable of refutation, 
or even of being rendered doubtful. All truth 
should support them, and every point of view re- 
veal them. That a straight line is the shortest dis- 
tance between two points, is not capable of direct 



Existence of God. 13 

geometrical demonstration, but any other position 
is capable of being refuted. Thus it must be with 
the foundations of our faith. 

The belief in God is fundamental in true philos- 
ophy or any system of morals. If not first in chron- 
ological order among the conceptions of the hu- 
man mind, it is first in its logical relations to all 
religious or moral ideas and convictions. 

It is often stated, even by theologians, that the 
existence of God is not capable of proof, and is, 
therefore, a subject of faith, rather than of positive 
knowledge. This statement is often misconstrued, 
as if the idea of a God had not adequate support. 
The agnostic uses it as if it were an admission fatal 
to the Christian's faith. He says, "No man knows, 
or can know, whether there be a God or not." But 
we undertake to provethat faith in Godis necessary 
both to the intellectual and moral world, and that 
the denial of this great truth would be the denial of 
all knowledge. We undertake, in other words, to 
prove either that we know that there is a God or 
that we cannot know anything at all. 

I begin with the recognition of intelligence — 
the power in man of perceiving and knowing 
truth. To deny this is to despair of knowledge 
and to conclude that nothing can be known. 

I am, then, an intelligent being, and capable 
of knowledge. What is that, then, which I call 
knowledge? and by what process attained? What 
I call knowledge I have gathered from the world 
about me; but on what conditions? Can I find 



14 Foundations of Faith. 

knowledge where it is not? or can I gather 
thought where none is expressed? or can that 
which is not the expression of intelligence convey 
intelligence to me? 

I take up this book. It bears the name of 
Shakespeare. I peruse its pages. My mind is 
informed; thought is awakened; knowledge is 
communicated. But I get out of this book only the 
thought that is expressed in it; and the book itself 
does not think. It stands as a medium through 
which intelligence reaches me from another mind. 
It is from that mind I am instructed. My own 
intelligence is developed, instructed, only when I 
am put in communion with intelligence elsewhere. 
I can gather no thought, no knowledge, where 
they are not expressed. 

I now ask, Whence have I gathered, primarily, 
all that I call knowledge? From the book of nature. 
Whether it be of science or of experience — of what- 
ever character my knowledge may be — I have gath- 
ered it from this source, or it has been gathered 
for me from this source by others. But has any 
study of nature conveyed actual knowledge to 
me? I answer, Not unless knowledge is there ex- 
pressed. I can read in the book only that which 
is there written. A chaos without law or order, 
and where no relations are fixed, no causes appar- 
ent, no sequences established, would convey no 
knowledge to the human mind, because it would 
have no suggestion of knowledge in its arrange- 
ment. Only where order, purpose, and law are 



Existence of God. 15 

manifest can knowledge be gained. The work of 
nature can inform my intelligence only upon the 
condition of being itself an expression of intelli- 
gence. If I miss the idea of design and law in 
nature, it teaches me nothing. Indeed, I must 
recognize purpose there, or turning back upon that 
-which I call my own reason, as also a part of this 
order of nature, regard it too as without purpose 
or end. If I claim any knowledge, it is only such 
as nature reveals. But nature reveals neither in- 
telligence nor knowledge, if it be not a product 
of intelligence, if intelligence have not written its 
record upon it everywhere. 

We conclude, then, that no other proof is need- 
ed that nature is the work of intelligence than 
this, namely, that nature is intelligible. If nature 
conveys intelligence to me, it is because intelli- 
gence is expressed in it; and if intelligence and 
knowledge are not expressed in nature, what I 
have been wont to call knowledge is a delusion, 
and I know nothing. Cut off from any fountain 
or source of intelligence, what I call my own intel- 
ligence has no longer any purpose or meaning. 
An eye upon which no light ever falls, an ear upon 
which no sound-wave ever beats, such were a fac- 
ulty of intelligence to which no intelligence ap- 
peals in all the works of nature. Thus it is that 
I dare assert that I know there is a God, or else I 
know nothing. Looking forth upon a chance 
world, where no intelligence is expressed, I must 
confess that knowledge is impossible. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Existence of God — Belief in God Essen- 
tial to Morals. 

In the preceding chapter we proved that the 
idea of an intelligent First Cause is a necessity of 
philosophy, by showing that it cannot be rejected 
without confusing all our ideas of knowledge and 
plunging us into despair of knowing anything at 
all. In this we consider the relation of the idea of 
God to our conceptions of moral obligation. 

Man is a moral being. He instinctively recog- 
nizes himself as such. In this sense of responsibil- 
ity moral nature is only self-conscious — only rec- 
ognizes itself as existing; and, surely, without such 
recognition of itself, it could have neither function 
nor existence. 

None are so bold as to deny that man is a moral 
being. The maddest skeptic must acknowledge 
the obligations of truth, integrity, purity. Ac- 
tions must ever be, to our thought, good or bad, 
and we must still distinguish the base and the no- 
ble in character. Our ideas of government, also, 
rest upon the conception of responsibility to moral 
law, and can only be justified by such a conception. 

Now, it is sufficient to point simply to the prac- 
tical fruits of this idea to prove that it represents 
that which is real and abiding. The welfare of 
states, of societies and individuals, is secured by 
(16) 



The Existence of God. 17 

regard to what we call moral laws. That which 
is found to be for man's highest good — demanded 
by his nature and the conditions of his state — can 
never be false. It is to him a thing to be believed 
and regarded. Experience itself fully proves to 
man that his idea of moral obligation is not a delu- 
sion, but that in what he calls moral obligation he 
has found the fulcrum upon which human destiny 
is turning. 

But moral obligation logically demands moral 
government. The moral sense is, indeed, a sense 
of responsibility to law; not springing from a pre- 
vious conception of law, but prompted by a law 
within, and demanding the idea of a law external 
as the only explanation of its existence. With- 
out the idea of accountability, no sense of obliga- 
tion can exist. They are correlated. 

Man cannot regard the ideas of right and wrong 
as representing nothing but himself. Right and 
wrong must have some other source than man's 
own will. If we stop with the human will alone, 
moral obligation is nothing. Man making laws 
for himself is only proposing to follow his own 
pleasure. Can that which originates in the hu- 
man will bind the human will? No sense of ob- 
ligation is felt, save as we recognize a power and 
authority above us — conditions of well-being, 
under which we are forever bound. 

Legislatures establish statutes which regulate 
the methods of business and the processes of ad- 
ministering justice. But no legislator thinks of 
2 



1 8 Foundations of Faith. 

himself as the author of moral law. He only con- 
fesses and expresses it; he does not create it. 
Moral law is from above. If drawn forth from his 
own consciousness, or from his experience, man 
still recognizes it as the handwriting of God upon 
nature. Moral obligation is only confessed, not 
created, in human legislation. But the idea of 
such obligation can alone give birth to laws and 
governments. 

Even the ten commandments, the oldest writ- 
ten moral code, and that which is still received as 
the most perfect, did not come to men as the es- 
tablishment of obligations which did not previous- 
ly exist, or as the revelation of duties before un- 
known. And it is fair to state that, if the deca- 
logue itself were reversed, so that we should read, 
"Thou shalt kill," "Thou shalt steal," "Thou shalt 
bear false witness," no man could receive it as de- 
claring the will of the Creator. 

There is a heart -written law which no revelation 
can ignore. As no human being can hold himself 
to be the author of moral law or to have done any 
more in his moral teachings than give expression 
to obligations which rest upon all men and which 
all consciences must feel, so, in the administration 
of law, it is always assumed that there are funda- 
mental moral convictions which need not to be 
taught, which belong to all men, and of which 
none are ignorant. If one have signed notes or 
obligations ignorantly, the law will admit the ig- 
norance in his defense; but if the act in question 



The Existence of God. 19 

have reference to any general moral principle, 
no plea of ignorance will avail. If the murderer 
should plead, and even make it appear, that he did 
not know that the State had any law against mur- 
der, it would avail him nothing. He would be 
dealt with just as any other murderer, and that 
because it is assumed that the law, "Thou shalt 
not kill," is written upon the hearts of all men. 
Thus are our ideas of moral obligation separated 
from all human legislation. So clearly do they 
stand as relating us to some Power above our- 
selves, which, in all our conceptions of morals, we 
only confess and seek to regard. 

As our ideas of moral law must carry us beyond 
man himself, so, also, must they carry us beyond 
the mere order of nature. 

We have proved by experience that our natures 
have need of law. Human happiness is promoted 
by government. And just as governments are 
more perfectly developed to promote what we 
call virtue, and suppress what we call vice, is hu- 
man welfare thereby secured. 

The legislator says it is enough to know that 
this or that is expedient, that the history of the 
human race and the long run of human experience 
have demonstrated that such and such courses of 
action conduce to the general weal. But we can- 
not rest in the idea of expedience. 

If we are pointed to expedience as the founda- 
tion of law, we find in expedience these sugges- 
tions against that conclusion. Expedience is 



20 Foundations of Faith. 

marked with the character of universality; for the 
law, which is assumed to be based upon it, is for 
every man in the State alike. 

We find, further, that there is in expedience the 
character of permanence. That which is expe- 
dient in moral conduct in this generation is ex- 
pedient always. Experience has proved it. Thus 
what is called expedience reveals an order of na- 
ture, changeless and everlasting, which points the 
way of human happiness or misery, and we are 
borne back, necessarily, beyond any idea of mere 
expedience or experience, to the recognition of 
immutable law, asserting itself always in the con- 
stitution of things — a law without variableness or 
shadow of turning, and w T hich alone can make it 
expedient to do this or that. Such a law we must 
interpret as the purpose of the Creator. 

But the question now arises, Why should this 
order of nature, under which we are bound, have 
respect especially to moral life and action? For 
man perceives that it is not expedient for him to 
live as the beast. He has instincts and capabili- 
ties which belong to what he calls moral nature, 
and they open the paths of moral action, and in 
moral conduct he experiences that his highest ele- 
vation is reached and his greatest good attained. 
Thus man has the proof that he belongs to an or- 
der of things which finds in moral life and experi- 
ence suggestion of its ultimate design and its high- 
est end. 

Matter is inert. It has no intellectual or moral 



The Existence of God. 21 

power. It is not capable of design. If, then, we 
find in the order of nature a design constantly ful- 
filling itself in intellectual and moral natures, what 
can we conclude but that the whole order of na- 
ture is the expression of an intelligent purpose 
and a moral end? If we recognize moral nature 
or obligation, we cannot rest either in ourselves, 
in the human will, or in the order of the material 
world, but must go back of these to the idea of 
a moral governor of the world. 

The following argument, likewise, seems legiti- 
mate. We have a conception of justice. We 
must think of the principle of justice as invariable 
and eternal. But what is justice? It has no ab- 
stract existence. It does not exist by itself. I 
may think of beauty or goodness, but they do not 
dwell alone. If I find them, I find them in some 
being or object. They are qualities — attributes. 
Now, justice is but a quality of character or an at- 
tribute of moral being. It must have its basis in 
moral nature. But if justice be an immutable 
principle, it must abide in an imitnutable being; and 
if it be an eternal principle, it must abide in an 
eternal being. We must conclude, therefore, that 
there can be no philosophy which can consistently 
hold an immutable and eternal principle of justice 
apart from an immutable and eternal God. Law 
demands a lawgiver. Purpose demands a design- 
er. Moral principles demand moral being. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Existence of God — The Cosmological 

Argument. 

Whether we hold matter to be eternal, or that 
it was brought into existence by a Creator, yet in 
the arrangements of matter, and in the order of 
nature, a designing cause is manifest. 

We find connected with matter phenomena 
which no properties of matter or laws governing 
it will explain. If we are rightly taught in natural 
science, inertia is an essential property of matter. 
This is true, notwithstanding there are chemical 
agents which, in combinations, designed or acci- 
dental, may evolve force, movement, and arrange- 
ment. Subterranean fires burn, and mountains are 
upheaved; electric fires are unchained, and the 
lightnings play; crystals, perfect in mathematical 
form, are mysteriously shaped. But these things 
give us no suggestion of the origin of that stupen- 
dous harmony and all-embracing order which bind 
and sway the universe; and it is safe, so far as any- 
thing we know of matter is concerned, to say, as 
taught in our philosophies, that inertia is an es- 
sential property of matter. At rest, it can never 
set itself in motion, and in motion it can never 
bring itself to rest. In whatever state it is found, 
in that state it must remain until some external 
agency, operating upon it, change its condition. 

(22) 



The Existence of God. 23 

The motion of the planets, therefore, becomes 
a mystery which no laws or principles of matter 
will explain. That which we pronounce inert is in 
motion upon every side. Through sublime orbits, 
in satellite and solar systems, in group and cluster 
systems, the worlds circle and sweep. If these 
worlds were brought to rest, they would never 
resume their flight or spring to their orbits again. 
But now their movements are ruled to such per- 
fect order of course and time that eclipses may 
be unerringly calculated for past or future cen- 
turies. 

The fundamental tenets of materialism, as it 
is to-day opposed to the doctrine of an intelligent 
cause of things, are these: (1) Matter is eternal; 
(2) Force is persistent; (3) Motion is continuous. 
These propositions are intended to suppress the 
whole question of a direct creation. With the first 
of these propositions only we shall deal. 

The nebular hypothesis of creation, suggested 
by Laplace, afterwards elaborated by the author of 
"The Vestiges of Creation/' is attractive to many 
minds. Assuming the tenets of materialism as 
stated, it attempts to conceive of the matter which 
now composes the universe as in a state which 
could be reduced to its present order by the forces 
assumed. The outlines of the system are briefly 
stated thus: 

All the matter of the universe, as now organized 
into worlds and systems, previously existed in a 
state intensely heated and rarified — what the the- 



24 Fomidations of Faith. 

orists term "a universal fire mist." In particles 
of matter free to move to a common center, such 
movement gives a rotary motion to the mass, as 
the particles of water moving to a common center 
— a hole in the bottom of a bucket — creates a 
whirlpool. 

The attraction of gravitation, drawing the par- 
ticles of this hypothetical "fire mist" toward a 
common center, gave a rotary motion to the whole. 
The process of cooling went forward with the proc- 
ess of condensation. The outer crust hardened. 
The heated inner mass, still shrinking, broke loose 
from the crust, which sometimes, broken into frag- 
ments, gathered into orbs revolving in orbits 
around the great central mass, or remained as rings 
encircling it. Thus the present order was evolved. 

This theory does not relieve us of the neces- 
sity of supposing a direct creation. For, if it be 
claimed that matter is eternal, it is readily an- 
swered that, begin when and where we will to 
evolve the present order — and that which comes 
as the result of changes must have a beginning 
— there must be still assumed an eternal exist- 
ence of matter, lying back of any change or 
state assumed. Matter, therefore, could not 
have eternally existed in this hypothetical "fire 
mist," with the laws forever acting upon it which 
have brought it to the present state. All changes 
have their time and their history, and the forces 
which produce them must alike have their time of 
duration measured by the changes they produce. 



The Existence of God. 25 

The nebulous state of matter, if it be claimed that 
matter is eternal, can no more be assumed as eter- 
nal than the state we now see. Nor by adding 
both, or assuming a transition from one to the 
other, can we get the idea of eternity. It is just 
as reasonable to postulate matter in cold and 
opaque mass before the nebulous state as it is to 
postulate the nebulous state before the present. 
Whatever suggestions we may find that the matter 
of the worlds was once in this heated nebula, 
we can no more begin with matter in that form 
than in the present, without a direct creation. 
And since we are under the necessity of thinking 
of some beginning, of any defined state, and some 
guiding purpose, it seems far more consistent to 
accept that condition of things which expresses 
the Creator's purpose as the beginning than to 
assume that a God of infinite wisdom and power, 
though purposing such a condition as a goal, 
planned and labored toward it through immeasura- 
ble ages ere he could reach it. Conceive of matter 
in any state we will, the doctrine of the eternity 
of matter compels us to assume that before that 
state matter eternally existed, and the laws which 
evolved that state eternally operated and yet noth- 
ing began. For, if matter began to exist in any 
state, or laws began to operate upon it in any state, 
then direct creation is confessed, and all that was 
fhence evolved must be accepted as the result of 
a designing Cause. 

We are aware that the materialist also gives the 



26 Foundations of Faith* 

theist his problem to solve. He returns the ar- 
gument made against the eternity of matter in 
much the same form against the idea of an eternal 
God. "For," says he, "assume that matter be- 
gan at some time to be created and organized by 
the direct power of a God who is from eternity, then 
place that beginning of creation when you will, 
you are forced to assume, before such beginning, 
a God of power, will, and purpose, who did noth- 
ing. If you tell us there was a beginning to the 
works of God, you must think of an eternity pre- 
ceding in which God did not work at all. 

Xo one can deny the gravity of this difficulty. 
We can only answer, that, since we see order, law, 
and design impressed upon matter even-where, and 
must think of mind as the only explanation of this, 
we are compelled, logically, to put mind before 
matter, and to believe that it has presided over 
all the adjustments of the material creation. We 
can only rest upon this logical order of things. 
Eternity, as respects matter or God, is "a vast 
unfathomable sea where all our thoughts are 
drowned." 

The mystery of life confronts us like the mys- 
tery of the order of the material world. The oak 
tree comes from the acorn, and the acorn comes 
from the oak. It was not always so. But who 
will tell us which was first, the oak or the acorn? 
The child is both offspring and father of the man. 
But were there not once human parents who never 



The Existence of God. 27 

were children, or human children who had no hu- 
man parents? 

What we mean to suggest is that the present 
order, under which we see life propagated and pre- 
served, gives us no suggestion of its origin. The 
order which we see is but an accident of life itself. 
There was once an oak that never grew from an 
acorn, or there was once an acorn that never grew 
from an oak. The fixed law that every seed pro- 
duces after its kind leaves the beginning of all a 
mystery that receives not the least suggestion for 
its solution in anything we see. The law by which 
life is perpetuated, the conditions under which it 
is bound, give no suggestion of its origin. 

Materialistic evolution suggests that life is pro- 
duced of matter; that some chance combination of 
elements produced life in its lowest form, and that 
from this primordial germ all life has been evolved. 
This was a germ of marvelous potency, most sure- 
ly, when we consider the measureless range and va- 
riety of animal life as we now behold it. An equal 
marvel is, that this law of evolution, which has 
from such small capital produced so much, can 
now, with the immense resources on hand, pro- 
duce nothing; for in all the range of our actual 
knowledge we are not able to show that any new 
species of creatures has been produced in the way 
suggested. 

But this theory of evolution is not only unsus- 
tained by anything we know, but is contradicted 
by the most obvious truths. Simply stated, it as- 



28 Foundatio7is of Faith. 

sumes that life is the result of certain combina- 
tions of matter — that the life of the first living 
thing was begotten by the material elements of 
the body in which that life was manifested. Yet 
it seems clear that life is not the result of organ- 
ism. The life which inhabits my body did not 
wait for the body to be built. There was not the 
perfect body, in bone and muscle, nerve and fiber, 
and then the first throb and pulsation of life. But 
life began to move and build itself a house. The 
inhabitant was not produced by the house in which 
it dwells, but it built the house. The life that ani- 
mates the body built up the body which it ani- 
mates. Organism is the product of life, and not 
life of organism. 

If we ascend to the higher form of life in intel- 
ligence, we find a life which is still more clearly 
marked as being neither the product of matter nor 
bound under the conditions which control mat- 
ter. True it is that this intellectual life, as we 
are able to observe it, is connected with physical 
organism under conditions which we are able to 
point out. But it exhibits characters, neverthe- 
less, which assert its supremacy over material laws. 

The life of the plant may be shown to depend 
upon thermal and atmospheric conditions and 
upon earth and moisture; and one may, with meas- 
urable certainty, apply forces to control or sup- 
press physical life. We may measure accurately 
the forces which will modify or destroy physical 
life- If it is inscrutable in its origin, it is at least 






The Existence of God. 29 

conditioned within the range of material agencies. 
But thought will not be controlled. Its move- 
ments can be determined by no force. They 
cannot be certainly predicted. Purposes are 
formed with the sense of freedom, and no power 
is found to compel them. No influences bind the 
will. No force can be arrayed upon the material 
side to regulate the movements of intelligence. 
Here is a life unconditioned as to its movements, 
so far as we know. 

Intelligence asserts itself over matter. It calls 
into service material laws. It makes dead matter 
its medium, and turning the material world into its 
passive instrument, man's thought flashes round 
the globe, annihilating time and space. Man finds 
himself, by virtue of his intelligence, a designing 
agent, an efficient cause. If, then, he sees about 
him the marks of design on that work which is in- 
finitely beyond and above his power, what can he 
conclude but that mind is superior to matter, is 
not born from matter, and that, infinitely exalted 
above himself, there must be an intelligent Cause 
of this human intelligence and of all things? 

It is agreed by metaphysicians that the idea of 
causation is intuitive and essential to the human 
mind. We cannot rest in the mere recognition 
of things as existing. We must inquire whence 
they came; we must demand for them a cause; and 
if we see upon the things about us the marks of 
design, we must think that the Cause of all things 
is an intelligent agent. If we hold that there are 



30 Foundations of Faith. 

manifestations of wisdom and power in the world, 
we must believe in an almighty and wise Creator 
of the world. We intuitively demand a cause for 
that which we see. But this chain of causes and 
effects cannot be endless. That we also clearly 
recognize. Therefore, whatever fancies we may 
indulge of evolution, whatever measures of time 
we may assign to the unfolding of things as they 
are, we must rest at least in a First Cause, beyond 
which we cannot pass, and short of which we can- 
not stop; and, if we acknowledge intelligence in 
ourselves, and the marks of intelligence upon 
things around us, an intelligent Cause is the only 
logical — may we not dare to say the only possible? 
— conclusion. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Existence of God — The Teleological 

Argument. 

We have declared our acceptance of the doctrine 
of intuitive ideas as the necessary basis of all rea- 
soning. We are not called upon to furnish a cate- 
gory of those ideas which may be classed as intui- 
tive, but shall keep within well-defined bounds in 
all which we employ as such in this argument. 
Three ideas, which the greatest philosophers ac- 
cept as intuitive, will serve our purpose. 

First, the idea of Cause. Sensation gives us ex- 
ternal objects and phenomena; but sensation does 
not give us the idea of causation. In the vast uni- 
verse it is but an infinitesimal point that falls un- 
der our observation, and of things manifest to our 
senses, even the proximate causes are seldom seen. 
Our observation and experience are limited to the 
minutest points of time and space. They could 
not authorize us, did they reveal the causes of 
many things, to demand a cause for all things. Yet 
this, which the facts furnished by sensation can 
never authorize us to do, we find ourselves com- 
pelled to do in every exercise of reason. It may 
even be said that sensation does not furnish the 
cause of anything. We see certain results from 
certain conditions of matter, as the growth of the 
plant from conditions of earth and air, of light and 

(30 



32 Foundations of Faith. 

moisture and heat, and we speak of these as proxi- 
mate causes. Yet they are only the modes of ac- 
tion of a cause that is hidden. We understand 
that these things are necessary for the growth of 
the plant, but no one knows why the plant, thus 
furnished, lives and grows. The real cause of 
things always eludes the senses, and no man claims 
to have discerned the cause of any phenomenon in 
nature about him. Yet, at sight of any phenome- 
non, be it but the falling of a leaf, reason seizes 
upon the idea of cause and instantly carries that 
idea through all the ranges of the universe, as- 
serting, without the slightest misgiving, that ev- 
erything has a cause. Hence we conclude that the 
idea of cause is intuitive; that it is furnished out of 
the human mind itself; that it comes forth necessa- 
rily in any exercise of the reason, and that its basis 
is in pure reason, to which it is always a necessity. 
The idea of the Infinite, like the idea of Cause, 
is ever present, and necessarily present, in our rea- 
son. Sensation does not reveal the infinite; it 
does not fall within the scope of observation; it 
does not come within the range of experience. 
And yet it is impossible for thought to rest with- 
in the limits of the finite, as it is impossible to fix 
bounds to time or space. Thought, in all its 
ranges, embraces only the finite, but it apprehends 
the infinite, though it cannot comprehend it; and 
the highest inspiration of the human genius is an 
influence from that realm of awe and mystery. 
This influence was well expressed by Newton, who 



The Existence of God. 33 

said that he ''felt like a child gathering pebbles 
upon the shore of the ocean." His thought was 
not upon the pebbles, but upon the ocean. The 
grandeur of the prospect for a great mind was not 
in the shore that the eye could measure, but in 
the shoreless and immeasurable deep. An egotis- 
tic sensualist, who deems himself simply an animal, 
born of the clod, may boast of his wisdom, but 
philosophic minds, since the days of Plato, have 
been most deeply impressed by the awe of the in- 
finite. When we see the limited, the conditioned, 
the finite, we must think of the unbounded, the un- 
conditioned, the infinite. 

Take the idea of the Good. Is it not always 
present? Is there not a principle in human nature 
which compels distinctions of good and bad in all 
our thoughts of actions, principles, or character? 
But the perfectly good we have never seen. In the 
characters about us many degrees of goodness are 
recognized, but the absolutely good is not found. 
We have, therefore, the idea of the good by virtue 
of a necessary principle of our nature, and the idea 
of the perfectly good lying beyond all that obser- 
vation or experience has furnished. From hence 
our ideals are born; but we reject our ideals when 
wrought out, and demand higher ideals still. The 
perfectly good must be, though no man has at- 
tained it, and though all our ideals come short of it. 

Accepting now the thought of ultimate and ef- 
ficient cause, the thought of the infinite and the 
thought of the absolutely good as intuitive, that 
3 



34 Foundations of Faith. 

is to say furnished by reason itself, and necessarily 
present in all systems of thought, we proceed to 
x note that these thoughts not only arise, as sug- 
gested, out of our own reason, but that they can- 
not be set aside without the overthrow of reason 
itself. Shall I reject the idea of causation as de- 
lusive? Then all investigation must cease; all at- 
tempt to correlate truth in logical order is vain. 
For that logical order is not an order simply of uni- 
form sequence, as Mr. Hume would claim. The 
idea of cause cannot be thus cast aside or lost in 
the sequence of phenomena. To men upon this 
earth, day and night have succeeded each other 
through all the generations. Man has no experi- 
ence contrary to this, and this experience is uni- 
form and universal; and yet men know very well 
that this experience is purely incidental, and that 
the earth might be so adjusted in relation to the 
sun as to give one hemisphere perpetual day and 
the other perpetual night. The idea of cause and 
effect is not obtained from sequence, nor limited 
to it. Observation deals with facts, reason with 
principles; and reason cannot surrender this idea 
of causation without confessing her own consti- 
tution and nature a lie, and renouncing all search 
for truth as hopeless. Nor can reason contemplate 
any object under the idea of finiteness without 
having in thought infinity. So in regard to the 
idea of absolute goodness, it cannot be surrendered 
without the destruction of all moral ideas, as 
shown in a previous chapter. 



The Existence of God. 35 

We ask now, Whence came these intuitive ideas, 
and what do they represent? 

Admitting that they arise necessarily out of the 
human mind, is man the author of them? Have 
they their sole and ultimate cause in human 
thought, and do they represent nothing beyond 

it? 

Man conceives of these thoughts as representing 

to his mind universal and eternal truths. Does he 
regard himself as the author of these truths? Cer- 
tainly not. Truth were then but a phantom of the 
brain, with no objectivity, revealing nothing, signi- 
fying nothing. The human mind perceives truth, 
but it is not the source of it. A man will say, "My 
thought/' "My reason/' but he can never say "My 
truth." Man, limited and finite, perceives truths 
which represent to him principles changeless and 
universal. This idea of causation represents a 
principle which runs through all worlds, from ever- 
lasting. This principle was before man was upon 
the earth, and would abide unchanged if man were 
no more. So also in regard to the ideas of the in- 
finite and the absolutely good. We are ready to as- 
sert with confidence that without that which these 
ideas represent the worlds of matter and of mind 
could not be at all. They are indeed eternal veri- 
ties, which lead us back, beyond all created things, 
since without them things could not be. 

Thus what we call intuitions represent to us 
eternal verities. The ideas of Cause, of the Infi- 
nite and the Good, appeal to something beyond 



36 Foundations of Faith. 

themselves — something higher than man, some- 
thing greater than the universe itself, since, with- 
out them, this universe could not be; and yet the 
universe does not fully contain or exhaust them. 

To what conclusion, then, must we come? Eter- 
nal principles demand a basis for their existence 
and a condition for their manifestation. Goodness 
is not an abstraction, nor is Cause an abstraction. 
Goodness demands being; it is an attribute of be- 
ing. We must trace it to that source, or it means 
nothing. If we find goodness, we must find it in 
some being. If it manifests itself, it manifests itself 
in being. We must follow this angel of light up 
beyond all creatures and all ideals to the One eter- 
nal and infinitely good; or, having pursued her 
through the whole universe, lose her at last in pri- 
meval darkness, and be forced to pronounce her a 
chimera. "There is none good save One, that is 
God." 

The idea of Cause makes equal demand for the 
recognition of a being in whom ultimate and ef- 
ficient cause may be found. 

We have referred to proximate causes, which we 
are wont in our common speech to call causes, but 
which are only operations and agents that repre- 
sent a cause. The growth of the plant has been 
referred to. It is a resultant of many agencies. 
What we note here is that no single thing is ever 
seen to operate as an agent at all. The light, the 
heat, the moisture, the air, and the earth combine 
to produce the results we see. No single one of 



The Existence of God. 37 

these alone accomplishes anything. The various 
elements of matter are capable of wondrous com- 
binations, and out of these combinations spring 
wondrous results, but apart each is powerless; nor 
in all their combinations do we detect any secret of 
power. Results are inexplicable. The methods 
only we see. Thus it appears to us that no single 
element in nature is found to possess the potency 
of causation, nor yet do we detect that potency in 
any combination of elements. Besides, could we 
regard these things as causes, it could only be in a 
secondary sense, and we should still demand the 
cause of causes and seek that cause of causes in 
unity, in a self-acting agent, in short, in an intelli- 
gent Creator. 

Eternal verities must represent to us eternal be- 
ing, and in that being we must find perfection of 
nature — infinite goodness, infinite wisdom, infinite 
power. The only approach to such a being man 
finds in himself; in an intelligence that can, in some 
faint measure, comprehend the intelligence re- 
vealed in the order and vastness, the beauty and 
adaptation of nature, and in a will whereby he finds 
himself, within his limitations, a self-acting agent. 
Man gives us the type of that all-perfect One and 
reveals, on a finite scale, these attributes to which 
we are compelled to add the idea of the uncondi- 
tioned and infinite. 

I conclude, then, that as the senses put me in 
communion with the physical world, so do intui- 
tions put me in communion with the spiritual. 



38 Foundations of Faith. 

They represent the power of direct perception 
upon the spiritual side of my nature as the senses 
upon the physical side. Both are alike a part of my 
nature, and must be accorded equal authority in 
any true system of philosophy. We cannot deny 
intuitions with Locke, nor deny them objectivity 
with Kant. We must trust sensation and intu- 
ition alike. We must believe that they put us in 
communion with the worlds to which we, in this 
twofold nature, are related. Such is that eclecti- 
cism, which is the strongest current of philosoph- 
ical thought at the present day. We know God as 
we know the works of nature about us. The in- 
tuitions which belong to reason — which are neces- 
sary to reason — are God's work, and to be trusted 
as the senses are to be trusted. The intuitive con- 
victions come from the objects to which they point, 
as the impressions of the senses come from the ob- 
jects which awaken them. A speculative philoso- 
phy has denied objectivity to the latter as it has 
denied any revelation of truth to the former, and 
with as much reason. The philosophy of common 
sense will not begin by making human nature a lie 
upon either side. 

We can trust intuitions. All creatures below us 
trust their instincts. Those impressions which be- 
long to nature are God's voice in nature. The bird, 
the bee, and the worm trust their instincts, and 
their instincts never lie; they never mislead. The 
worm that crawls in the dust has in itself the prom- 
ise and potency of a higher life, and an instinct 



The Existence of God. 39 

which is a safe guide to that life. Prompted by this 
instinct, it prepares for the future. It selects its 
daily food in reference to the web that shall weave 
its shroud. It creeps aside at the appointed time 
and weaves that shroud about its body — a shield 
to protect it for a time from being devoured by 
other creatures. In due time it comes forth to a 
life wondrously changed; from creeping in the dust 
to float on gaudy wings and gather its dainty food 
from the cups of flowers. What if the worm should 
begin to philosophize, and begin so fatally, withal, 
as to deny the authority of its instincts? It would 
say: "Experience alone is my guide; I have a 
strange impulse in my nature, but experience has 
shown me nothing; I will not regard this impulse." 
The worm would perish — perish for its unbelief — 
perish for no sin but that of accepting the Spen- 
cerian philosophy. The fundamental error is not 
in following experience, but in refusing to recog- 
nize that which is inherent in nature itself as an ex- 
perience, of all others the most significant and 
vital. Let it be understood, however, that neither 
intuition nor sensation gives us anything more than 
suggestions. The senses of the savage are as per- 
fect as those of the philosopher. As it is possible 
for men with senses, perfect and in full exercise, to 
entertain the grossest and most erroneous concep- 
tions of the material world, so the grossness of 
man's views of spiritual things argues nothing 
against the certainty and uniformity of intuitions. 



4-0 Foundations of Faith. 

Intuition gives suggestion of principles, not knowl- 
edge of things — principles from which things are 
logically inferred. The extent and correctness of 
knowledge, whether of things spiritual or material, 
depend upon our researches and reasonngs. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Revelation — Presumptive Evidence. 

We believe in God. That faith the light of na- 
ture justifies, and even demands. Shall we go fur- 
ther and believe that God, the Creator of all, has 
given to man a special revelation of his character 
and will? Has he a purpose concerning man? and 
is it needful for man to know what that purpose is? 

That Supreme Wisdom should create without a 
purpose, none can believe. God has a purpose, 
doubtless, in all inanimate things. In myriads of 
living creatures he has a purpose; but fixed laws 
drive them to their goal and destiny, and as they 
choose not that destiny they need no knowledge 
of it. 

But man is endowed with reason and moral na- 
ture. He is conscious of power to choose the 
character of his own life. He believes that he is 
shaping for himself a destiny according as he obeys 
or disobeys the will of his Maker. Has he then any 
direct revelation of that will, any knowledge of the 
Creator's purpose, save that which nature's light 
has unfolded to his unaided reason? 

It cannot be denied that God is able to reveal 
directly his character and will to man. Nature 
and her established laws cannot have exhausted 
the resources of Omnipotence. We cannot believe 
that man came into being by the will of a divine 

(41) 



42 Foundations of Faith. 

Father who is unable to make himself known, di- 
rectly, to his children. Blank atheism were more 
reasonable than that. We cannot believe that God 
has created man without any purpose as to his con- 
duct. And since the conduct of a free moral in- 
telligence is regulated by no inherent force, the 
will of God concerning man must be sought in 
some revelation addressed to his intelligence, and 
under which, as a self-determining agent, he is 
held to account. 

It may be further confidently accepted that God 
would reveal himself directly to us, his creatures, if 
our good were to be promoted thereby. If our 
Creator be a benevolent being, this must follow. If 
he be a malevolent being, all things are evil and all 
hope is lost. Man is manifestly the object of the 
Creator's special care. His preeminence among 
the creatures declares this. Since all are subject to 
his will and power, it must appear that all were 
made for him. Their purpose is to do him service. 
More and more the high commission, "Subdue and 
have dominion," unfolds. More and more, by his 
progress in knowledge, is man enthroned as a ruler 
of this earth. He stands forth, in the light of facts, 
the focal point of divine purpose in the creation of 
the world. 

Man has endowments which suggest direct re- 
lations to a Creator and moral Governor. He has 
a mind that reaches out after a knowledge of the 
Creator and his purposes. He has, in all stages of 
enlightenment — but the more as his knowledge is 



Revelation — Presumptive Evidence. 43 

increased — reckoned that his dignity and great- 
ness were in thoughts and aspirations and faiths 
which outreach the ranges of earth and time. He 
has a mind to comprehend the great plans of the 
Creator of the world. From all other creatures he 
is distinguished by these high gifts. We may also 
believe that, if it were in the original purpose of 
the Creator to guide man by a direct revelation, he 
would have prepared his creature for such guid- 
ance by implanting in his nature an easy faith in 
the supernatural — that is to say, we should find 
man by nature disposed to look for special mani- 
festations to him of the will of his Maker. 

We observe that such a disposition has been 
clearly manifested by man through all his race his- 
tory. It is by virtue of this inherent tendency that 
man has been made, under all conditions of his de- 
velopment, a religious being. A religious being by 
nature he certainly is. In all organizations of hu- 
man society or government some sort of religion 
lies at the foundation, and whether it be supersti- 
tious or enlightened, crude or well defined, reli- 
gious faith gives character to all national institu- 
tions and laws, and tone to man's convictions con- 
cerning his duty and destiny. 

This religious tendency in our nature, this easy 
faith in the supernatural, some, by a strange inver- 
sion of logic, have appealed to as an argument 
against believing in a divine revelation. "For/' 
say they, "what fact is more manifest in all the his- 
tory of our race than this, that man has been prone 



44 Foundations of Faith. 

to superstition, and that much that he once be- 
lieved to be directly from the gods has been found, 
under increased light, to belong to the categories 
of natural phenomena ?" 'The process," they tell 
us, "still goes on. Science is continually setting 
aside, as mere superstition, what was once devout- 
ly held in religious faith. Should we not, from such 
lessons of the past, cease to concern ourselves 
about religion, accepting, as most reasonable, the 
conclusion that all faith in the supernatural is 
a superstition, which shall one day be outgrown, 
and the doctrine of a divine revelation forever cast 
away?" 

Xow we agree that the progress of knowledge 
has pruned away many superstitions which once 
encumbered religious faith. We will also allow 
that this process shall go forward, and admit, as 
probable, that the best instructed and most cau- 
tious religionists of to-day may still hold to errors 
which a future age will reject. We also agree that 
reason is the proper guide of man; that it should 
have free exercise, unchecked by any foregone or 
irrevocable conclusions; and that no set of teachers 
in any age dare say to the reason of a future genera- 
tion, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." We 
can only count that faith sincere which appears to 
the individual who holds it to be in conformity with 
the best reason as he understands it. 

Notwithstanding these admissions, we are bound 
still to hold that man's natural tendency to believe 
in things supernatural is itself strong presumptive 



Revelation — Presumptive Evidence. 45 

evidence of a supernatural revelation. This very- 
endowment of the creature suggests the purpose of 
the Creator. As there would be no meaning or 
purpose in the eye without the light which enables 
us to see, or in the ear without the sound-waves 
which cause us to hear, so we must believe that this 
natural tendency to accept the supernatural, and 
to look for a direct revelation from God, is evidence 
of the Creator's purpose to give such a revelation. 
But as even sight and hearing often deceive and 
mislead us and need constant correction from 
reason and experience, so also it pertains to rea- 
son and experience to correct and guide this natu- 
ral tendency of faith, lest it bear us away into a 
realm of shadows and deliver us up to false lights. 
But as we do not discard all the revelations of sight 
because of those deceptions which have been im- 
posed upon it, so neither is it wise to discard all 
suggestions of this faith faculty simply because we 
have found that it needs guidance. That would 
be to cut ourselves off from infinite good in order 
to escape a partial evil. It would be burning the 
house to destroy the flies on the ceiling. 

We cannot discard the function of faith any more 
than that of reason. But we must still require 
that reason be unchecked, and that to her dictates 
faith shall always submit. "Believing where we 
cannot prove," we must not believe against proof. 
Mysteries we will admit, absurdities we will reject. 
And, as faith has, in all past ages, held more or less 
of what was superstitious and false, we will not 



46 foundations of Faith. 

deny that it may still be so with us, in any stage, 
and that our supreme duty is to seek to know rath- 
er than merely to believe. We cannot be philo- 
sophical without holding that, always, faith and 
reason should abide as equally essential in the op- 
erations of the human mind. In a well-balanced 
mind knowledge will never overthrow devoutness 
and faith in God. 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell, 
That mind and soul, according well, 

May make one music as before, 

But vaster. 

But it may be asked: "Are not God's will and 
character manifest in nature to him who can read 
aright that record? And may we not reasonably 
believe that to that light alone it has pleased the 
Creator to leave us? Will it not be said no finite 
being can ever know God fully by any means? 
And since God, in justice, can only hold man to ac- 
count according to his ability to know him, why 
object to the idea of being left to nature's teaching, 
since, if a direct revelation were given, it too must 
have its limits according to the limits of the human 
understanding?" 

We answer that the sort of revelation which the 
heart of man most yearns for is of a kind that na- 
ture cannot give at all. 

From the order of nature man might infer a God 
of infinite wisdom and power, yet he could never, 
from this source, learn God's overwatching care. 



Revelation — Presumptive Evidence. 47 

In nature we see only a fixed order — law, cold and 
inexorable. We could never get from nature the 
idea of help in need, or pardon of sin, or any possi- 
bility of spiritual communion and fellowship with 
our Maker. If out of his own heart, instinctively 
as a child flees to his parents, man should feel the 
prompting to look to God and cry to him for help, 
such cry would soon appear to be without reason, 
if no help were given. But if the cry were an- 
swered, then the fact of direct dealing of God with 
men would have to be admitted. Answer to 
prayer would itself be a special and direct mani- 
festation of the Father to his child. Now it is 
just at this point that religion is most concerned. 
Religious faith concerns itself not so much about 
any specific fact or duty as about the one idea of 
direct divine care and fellowship. It is from that 
faith that love is born, and moral purpose devel- 
oped, and all noble struggle inspired. Men are 
strong morally, according to their faith of holding 
direct relations with the moral Governor of the 
world. Set nature before us alone, or say that 
nature stands forever between us and God, and that 
all we can know of him is to be seen only in this 
inexorable machine, and then God is no longer 
personal in our thought, and no moral life or lesson 
comes to us from nature's teaching. On the other 
hand, let the faith in God, as a Father, who will 
directly regard our need and reveal himself to us, 
be once established, and all nature puts on a new 



48 Foundations of Faith. 

glory, and all the laws of nature are testimonies of 
our Father's love. 

A child who has personal knowledge and experi- 
ence of a father's love and care, and has enjoyed 
that father's society and fellowship, if removed to 
a distant land would be keen to interpret and wise 
to value and faithful to cherish every gift the fa- 
ther might afterwards send him. It would not be 
the utility of the gift for personal need that would 
make its value, so much as the testimony which it 
would constantly present of a loving relation to 
that father who gave it. The father would give 
himself in the gift, and the fellowship with the fa- 
ther would be to the child a food of the moral na- 
ture more valuable than any material good. It is 
thus that an experience of fellowship with God 
must prepare the way for a right interpretation 
of nature itself, or any ministering of nature to 
man's spiritual life. The question, then, as to the 
teaching of nature alone, as compared with a su- 
pernatural revelation of God to us, relates not to 
the extent of our knowledge in a given sphere, but 
the opening of a new sphere of knowledge and ex- 
perience altogether. It is the question of fellow- 
ship and communion with our heavenly Father. 

Our nature cries out for a knowledge of God, 
such as only a supernatural revelation can give. It 
is not his eternal power and wisdom that we long 
to know more about, but his relation to us, his 
mind toward us. Shall we, the highest of his crea- 
tures, dare to call him our Father who is in heaven? 



Revelation — Presumptive Evidence. 49 

Shall we believe that he cares for us, helps us, 
guides us? Shall we dare to pray and trust? And 
to what destiny are we traveling? And in whatway 
would he have us go? The faith that unites us to 
God as our Father and Guide is the supreme need 
for the strength of our moral nature and for our 
happiness in this world. 

The law of co-relation, which prevails through 
all God's works, is to us a strong assurance that 
these wants of mind and moral nature are not left 
unsupplied. 

We would further suggest, among the inferen- 
tial evidences of a divine revelation, the existence, 
from the remotest ages and among all people, 
of faith in personal and experimental relations to 
God. This belief is manifested in all forms of 
worship; in prayer and sacrifices, in praise and 
thanksgiving. All forms of religion are a testi- 
mony of a faith, perpetual and well-nigh universal 
among men, that as intellectual moral beings they 
have, through the ages, held direct communion 
with God. We are not able to see wherein nature 
alone gives such suggestion, or how the light of na- 
ture alone could inspire such faith; or how, if such 
faith has had no real answer to sustain it, it could 
have lived on in undiminished strength through 
all the generations of men. 

Direct manifestations of God to man, from the 
beginning of his career upon the earth, surely were 
necesssary to establish this faith. Spiritual fellow- 
ship with him, and the conscious answer of his Spir- 
4 



50 Foundations of Faith. 

it in the hearts and experiences of his trusting chil- 
dren, could alone keep such faith alive. In the re- 
ligious history of the world facts confront us which 
are inexplicable unless God has, indeed, at sundry 
times and in divers manners revealed himself to the 
children of men. 



CHAPTER VII. 
Miracles. 

Revelation assumes miracles. If we have any 
knowledge of God or his will besides that which 
has come to us from the study of nature, it could 
only have come to us through supernatural chan- 
nels. Any direct revelation of God to men must 
be attested by miracle. Such a revelation would 
be a miracle in itself. 

The term supernatural defines itself — that 
which is above nature, which nature by her laws 
cannot produce. 

In the material world we observe that all things 
have their essential or constituent properties, and 
that these properties have their affinities and mu- 
tual action upon each other. Phenomena are con- 
stantly appearing within the realm of the material 
which, however startling, we never think to attrib- 
ute to any cause but the forces which are always 
operating upon matter and which we denominate 
laws of nature. No one would think even of the 
explosion of a planet as a miracle. 

We allow also certain results to the operations 
of man upon nature. If we should see roses, ap- 
ple blossoms, and cherry blossoms all growing 
upon the same stock, we would agree that nature 
alone could never produce this; but, being within 
the power of an intelligent agent, operating upon 

(5x> 



52 Foundations of Faith. 

nature, we would still refuse to classify such a 
work as miraculous. But in this illustration we 
have taken a step toward the true idea of miracles, 
which are effects superinduced upon nature by an 
intelligent Agent, who manifests superiority to and 
dominion over nature in what he does. 

We agree that nothing shall be reckoned to be 
a miracle which does not manifest a purpose, as- 
serting the operations of an intelligent Agent, and 
such an Agent as is superior to all created intelli- 
gences, so far as we can know or conceive. If man 
appear as a worker of miracles, he must be reck- 
oned not as the possessor of the power, but the 
medium only through which the divine power is 
revealed. 

Only a power operating upon nature from be- 
yond nature's sphere can produce the supernat- 
ural. If, under existing laws, and by virtue of 
forces acting in the material world, though hidden 
from us, a planet broken from its orbit should 
drive within proximity to the earth, until the heav- 
iest objects on the surface of this globe floated in 
the air like feathers, this would not be supernatural 
or miraculous. 

But we are now met with the question, "How 
shall the supernatural or miraculous be known?" 
One says, "The word 'supernatural' has no right 
to a place in our vocabulary ; for until we know all 
the natural, how can we say of anything that it is 
supernatural?" We answer that we need not know 
all the natural, through all the ranges of the uni- 



Miracles. 53 

verse, in order to be assured of the supernatural in 
things which do lie within the sphere of our obser- 
vation and knowledge. The objection is present- 
ed in specious form, but is not true in its sugges- 
tions. It is not necessary to know all that nature 
can do before we can know anything which it can- 
not do. We do not need to comprehend the 
whole system of the universe to know that a rod 
of wood, instantly changed to a serpent, would be 
a thing supernatural, or that a really dead man, 
quickened into life at a word, would reveal super- 
natural power. If, turning from all material ob- 
jects, laws, and forces, man may direct his thought 
and prayer to the unseen, as to an omnipotent be- 
ing, and a spiritual agent, and know that he has not 
prayed and trusted in vain, he may well believe 
that he has come into touch with the Ruler of the 
world, from whom he has received direct manifes- 
tations. 

Although a miracle must be something above 
and beyond anything which the regular operation 
of nature's laws can produce, or which man's in- 
telligence may superimpose upon nature's work, 
yet we cannot accept that definition of a miracle 
which represents it as a suspension of nature's laws. 
A miracle is not the effect of natural law, neither 
is it contrary to natural law, but a thing superin- 
duced upon natural law, showing a power superior 
to it. So far from natural law ceasing to operate 
in the case of a miracle, the assumption that it does 
operate steadily and in full force is the only basis 



54 Foundations of Faith. 

upon which the miraculous can be predicated at 
all 

We must think of nature as a unit. Any sus- 
pension of a law of nature would affect nature in 
her whole domain. If it were known that any law 
of nature ceased at any time to act, so far from 
suggesting intelligent interposition, it would sug- 
gest a defect in creation, and be only an argument 
against an intelligent Creator. For, no matter 
whether what we call nature's laws be regarded 
as inherent in matter or the constant operation of 
creative and controlling power over it, the steady 
action of these forces is still a necessary condition 
to the harmony of the universe. 

If I take a stone from my path and toss it up- 
ward, it then assumes a motion directly contrary 
to that which the attraction of gravitation would 
give it. But is the law of gravitation, therefore, 
suspended as to this stone? That force is still act- 
ing; and the fact that it is acting alone gives sig- 
nificance to this upward movement, demanding for 
its explanation the intervention of another force, 
counteracting, for the time, the result which grav- 
itation alone would produce. Let it now be as- 
sumed that gravitation itself may cease to act at 
times upon stones, so that any stone is liable, for 
no other reason, to leave its fellows clinging to the 
earth and float away like a bubble, then there 
would be no basis upon which to predicate the 
interposition of any power in the matter. Our 
thoughts would no longer be led beyond nature 



Miracles. 55 

in such a case; only nature itself would seem un- 
settled and uncontrolled. 

Just as our confidence in the law of gravitation, 
that it acts as strongly on the upward moving as 
upon the falling stone, forces the mind to consider 
an agent who has produced the upward motion, 
so our confidence that nature's laws remain in force 
furnishes us the standards by which miracles are 
tested. 

The machinery of the world is such that the great 
Architect can directly interpose in its workings 
without break of its parts or suspension of the 
forces he has set to control it. The" illustration of 
the watch is in point. The maker of the watch, 
having completed its machinery, adjusted its parts 
to their proper places and functions, and fixed the 
mainspring as its driving force, assumes that the 
watch will now do its work without his interfer- 
ence. But, erelong, he discovers that this watch 
is too fast. He takes it in his hand, takes a key 
and turns it back to the proper time, and slightly 
moves the regulator. There is now in this watch 
a result produced, which did not come from the 
watch itself, yet no law of the watch has either 
been violated or suspended. A result has been 
produced which only an intelligent agent, who un- 
derstood the watch, could bring about. We may 
say, indeed, that here is a result which required 
alike the watch and the maker of the watch. . The 
watch was made capable of being used thus. Such 
was the maker's original plan; and he found it a 



56 Foundations of Faith. 

pliant agent in his hand to accomplish his pur- 
pose. It presented to its maker nothing antag- 
onistic to his power. Let us believe that such is 
the relation of the universe to its Creator. 

But as the watch, in its regular and daily move- 
ment, gives fuller expression of the maker's 
thought and purpose than is given by any momen- 
tary interposition of his hand, so we believe that a 
wise man will be especially attentive to the study 
of God in nature, and that the especial revelations 
God has given us are, in part at least, to assert his 
direct connection with that source of knowledge, 
that we may attribute nothing to nature apart 
from himself. 

This last thought suggests to us methods by 
which God may reveal himself. Natural agencies 
may be employed to give supernatural revelations, 
asserting the immediate operation and will of the 
Creator. The triumphs of mind over matter are 
constantly striking the world with new surprises. 
Man accomplishes results to-day which no former 
age could have believed possible. But these tri- 
umphs of mind are exhibited through natural 
agencies. The splendors of architecture, the ar- 
maments of war, the new methods of locomotion 
and communication of thought are examples of 
this. By the machinery which nature provides 
for his adjustment man flashes his thought in an 
instant across the seas. He gathers into his mind, 
hourly, the great events which hourly happen 
throughout the world. Ought we, then, to stag- 



Miracles. 57 

ger at the thought that He who created all the 
universe has ways, belonging to his power alone, 
to send his messages and thoughts to us? And 
if, in the ages to come, and in the developments of 
knowledge, it shall be seen that He who created the 
machinery of nature used that machinery for ac- 
complishing his purpose, proving himself a scien- 
tist beyond our dreaming, now, such disclosures 
will not in the least remove the supernatural from 
our faith. Beyond any natural agency within the 
knowledge of created beings, miracles of wisdom 
and power would still stand to reveal the direct 
operations of the Ruler of all things. 

Miracles often lie in the mere relations of cir- 
cumstances or events, which in themselves are in 
no way supernatural or even uncommon. Mur- 
rain in the cattle would hardly have been a sur- 
prise to the Egyptians had it not broken forth at 
the command of Moses. Swarms of locusts and 
of flies were familiar pests to the Egyptians; but 
when these things came at the bidding of one who 
declared himself the agent of the Almighty, there 
was reason to believe that God directly interposed 
to send them, and that Moses's claim was true. 
The supernatural element in the plagues of Egypt 
was clear enough when the circumstances and con- 
ditions under which they came were taken into ac- 
count. 

Most writers upon Christian evidences have giv- 
en considerable space to the refutation of David 
Hume's argument against the credibility of mira- 



58 Foundations of Faith. 

cles; but it is not now seriously urged, even by 
skeptics, its fallacy having been fully exposed. We 
shall therefore give it but brief notice. 

Availing himself of the false definition of mira- 
cles, too often allowed, Mr. Hume insists that such 
is our confidence in the uniform operations of na- 
ture's laws that no weight of human testimony 
to the contrary could produce conviction and es- 
tablish a rational and sincere belief that a miracle 
had been performed. Let the testimony of wit- 
nesses be extended to any number of men, deemed 
competent and credible, and let their testimony 
harmonize, without possibility of collusion, until 
the evidence upon that side is made as strong as 
human testimony can be, and one is ready to say, 
"It is impossible to doubt." Yet, turning now to 
the laws of nature, which to our observation act 
uniformly and ceaselessly, we must have as much 
confidence in such operation as we can possibly 
have in any human testimony; so, Mr. Hume in- 
sists, that real conviction under such circumstan- 
ces cannot take place. This argument is clearly 
fallacious, and a manifest begging of the question. 
There is nothing set against the testimony of the 
witnesses in the case assumed, except the foregone 
conviction or assumption that miracles are impos- 
sible, and hence not to be believed. Such an as- 
sumption would ever invalidate any experience, 
and cause such as might witness miracles to refuse 
to believe them. The assumption that miracles 
are unbelievable is the ground from which Mr. 



Miracles. 59 

Hume argues. But no one can admit the existence 
of a God and then deny the possibility of his per- 
forming miracles. Nor can any one acknowledge 
the possibility of miracles and logically deny the 
possibility of belief in miracles. But as to Mr. 
Hume's argument that belief in miracles cannot be 
established on human testimony, we may simply 
answer that, as a matter of fact, it has been so es- 
tablished, and that, too, in the minds of the best 
thinkers of the present and many previous genera- 
tions. 

But Hume's definition of a miracle is incorrect, 
as we have previously shown. We will agree that 
the laws of nature are never suspended or set aside, 
and yet find place for faith in miracles. As we have 
shown, it is just this idea, that nature's laws never 
cease to act, that enables us to form a correct idea 
of miracles and the standards by which miracles are 
tested. In results superinduced upon nature's 
laws while they are still in play, we see the very 
Author of nature revealing himself in his supreme 
creative power. Such manifestations teach us to 
look beyond nature, that the thought of God, 
Creator and Ruler of all things, may be made cen- 
tral in our conception of nature, and that, ruled 
by such a thought, we may read nature aright. 
Faith reaches beyond the visible and material. 
Yet the instinct of faith has been answered and re- 
assured by ocular testimony of the direct interpo- 
sition of God's hand in the phenomena of the ma- 
terial world. Thus has been furnished man the 



60 Foundations of Faith, 

key to interpret nature itself, as the work of an in- 
telligent Creator, who forever watches over his 
work and directs it to some intelligent consumma- 
tion and result. Nor can man, standing at the 
summit of this order of things, which he beholds,, 
doubt that the supreme purpose of the Creator is 
to be realized in himself — a being capable of know- 
ing God and communing with -him. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Inspiration and Revelation. 

We have seen that it is reasonable to believe 
that God would make known his will to men. The 
Eible claims to be a revelation of his will for our 
guidance. What arguments are presented to sus- 
tain this claim? What arguments must reason de- 
mand? 

Before attempting to answer these questions 
directly, I deem it needful to clear away certain 
rubbish with which the subject has been encum- 
bered. Not unfrequently have the defenders of the 
divine authority of the Bible gone into the con- 
test with unbelief loaded down with useless bur- 
dens. Mere trumpery has been defended as if it 
were essential truth, and Christian apologists have 
been driven back, at some points, because they at- 
tempted to prove too much. This observation 
applies, especially, to certain doctrines respecting 
inspiration. The term "inspiration" means "in- 
breathing," and is employed by theologians to ex- 
press a direct influence of the Divine Spirit in the 
production of the sacred writings, so as to invest 
them with infallibility and divine authority, as a 
revelation of God's will concerning the conduct of 
men. 

Such a view of the Old Testament Scriptures 
was rigorously held by the Jews, and is expressed 

(6l) 



62 Foundations of Faith. 

in Paul's second letter to Timothy when he says, as 
translated in the Revised Version: "From a babe 
thou hast known the sacred writings which are 
able to make thee wise unto salvation through 
faith which is in Christ Jesus. Every scripture 
inspired of God (flcoirvcwros — "God inbreathed"), 
is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correc- 
tion, for instruction which is in righteousness: that 
the man of God may be complete, furnished com- 
pletely unto every good work." 

In 2 Peter i. 21, we read: "For the prophecy 
came not in old time by the will of man, but holy 
men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost." Such claims are set up for the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures. The claim of continuous inspi- 
ration of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament 
writings is grounded, chiefly, upon Jesus' official 
promise to his apostles as his witnesses chosen to 
give his life and teaching to succeeding genera- 
tions: "The Holy Ghost shall teach you all things, 
and bring to your remembrance all that I have said 
unto you; he shall guide you into all truth; he shall 
show you things to come" (John xiv. 26; xvi. 13.) 

I have quoted these passages only to show that 
the claim of inspiration is authorized by the Scrip- 
tures themselves — for such portions, at least, as have 
right to a place in the sacred canon. Our inquiry 
is as to what such a claim may imply, and in what 
manner it is to be interpreted in its application to 
various scriptures. In other words, we inquire into 
the manner and extent of inspiration. 



Inspiration and Revelation. 63 

Some, moved with a zeal to exalt the sacredness 
of the Scriptures, have conceived of their writers 
as little else than machines, operated and con- 
trolled by the Holy Ghost, in conveying God's 
messages to the world. In their view, all the 
thought contained in the Bible, and the language 
in which it is expressed, must be regarded as pro- 
ceeding, directly, from God — the thought in- 
breathed, the words dictated by the Holy Ghost. 
To this view a thoughtful man will object that 
much of the Bible is purely historic, recording 
events which occurred within the obsevation of 
men, and which did not pertain to any sphere of 
divine or supernatural knowledge. For illustra- 
tion: If it be granted that Moses wrote the Penta- 
teuch, may we not ask where is the need in much 
that he wrote of the inspiration here assumed? Is 
not the record, for the most part, a history which 
was well known to his people at the time, and a rec- 
ord of his own acts and teachings? Did the Holy 
Ghost need to make Moses acquainted with most 
of the facts which he relates? What sort of inspi- 
ration did he need to tell us of the Egyptian bond- 
age, the oppression of the Pharaohs, and the deliv- 
erance of the Israelites? What sort of inspiration 
did he need to tell us of his solitary life in Midian, 
and how he married Jethro's daughter and kept 
Jethro's sheep, or of the journey in the wilderness 
and its events? Certainly not any direct com- 
munication to him by the Holy Ghost of the facts 
which he recorded was necessary for this. 



64 Foundations of Faith. 

The foregoing suggestions will apply over a 
wide field. The Bible history is found to be, by all 
possible tests, wonderfully accurate. Suppose we 
accept it as absolutely inerrant. To secure that 
inerrancy, could the direct influence of the Holy 
Ghost be required at all points? Might we not re- 
gard men as competent witnesses of what they 
themselves saw and said and did, without any di- 
vine illumination upon such matters? 

A necessary part of the theory of inspiration un- 
der discussion is that which respects the language 
used by the sacred writers. It is insisted that in 
the matter of utterance, whether in speaking or 
writing, inspired men were passive, and the lan- 
guage which they used was that of the Holy Ghost 
speaking through them; or, to state the matter 
somewhat differently, that there was a guidance of 
the Holy Ghost in every word, so that always the 
fittest word was chosen. 

The objector says in answer to such a view: "The 
Holy Ghost has no vocabulary or language of his 
own. The writers of the Bible used the language of 
their times, less perfect and adequate to the exact 
expression of thought than the better developed 
languages of to-day. Besides, the marks of individ- 
ual authorship in style are as clear in the sacred 
books as in modern compositions. Each writer 
was not merely limited to the language of his day, 
but to his more or less extensive knowledge of it. 
The same things are related by different writers of 
the Scriptures in different language. Can we, then, 



Inspiration and Revelation. 65 

believe that there is such importance in the precise 
words employed? But if this claim of verbal in- 
spiration were granted for the original documents, 
what would it avail? The original documents have 
long since ceased to exist. In the ancient manu- 
script copies many variations are found, and every 
translator, who gives us the meaning of these manu- 
scripts in the living languages of our time, gives 
that meaning in different words. What becomes, 
then, of verbal inspiration ?" Such objections are 
valid in spite of all the efforts which have been 
made to answer them. 

Along with an extreme view of verbal inspira- 
tion goes an extreme view of the inerrancy of the 
Bible record. If every thought which the book 
contains, and every word in which that thought 
was uttered, came directly from God, and is to be 
taken, in the severest sense, as his thought and 
speech, then there could be no possible error in 
the record in any of its statements or allusions. 
To convict it of any error in references to history, 
geography, or current facts, would invalidate the 
claim of inspiration and overturn faith in the di- 
vine authority of the Bible. But, in truth, the ab- 
solute inerrancy of the Bible in all its statements 
and allusions cannot be established. Sometimes 
we find a positive discrepancy in statements, as 
when we read in 2 Kings viii. 26, "Two and twenty 
years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign"; 
and in 2 Chronicles xxii. 2, "Forty and two years 
old was Ahaziah when he began to reign." Some- 
5 



66 Foundations of Faith. 

times we find an error of reference, as in Matthew 
xxvii. 9, where a prophecy is attributed to Jere- 
miah which is not found at all in Jeremiah, but be- 
longs to Zechariah. 

We may remark here that these differences were 
known to the early Church fathers, and the fact 
that they remain in the text, when they might have 
been eliminated with the stroke of a pen, is, to 
thoughtful Bible students, a proof of the fidelity 
with which original documents have been pre- 
served. 

Again, it is important to remember that much 
that the Bible teaches is presented to us in alle- 
gorical style, or in dramatic form, so that no 
severely literal construction can be placed upon 
its language. Few interpreters of the Bible to-day 
will insist upon six literal days of creation, yet, for 
nearly two thousand years, such was the only view 
which was regarded as consistent with the record. 
Now we hold that Genesis only puts the creation 
in dramatic form and order in its six days, and 
bears no testimony as to literal time. We are also 
satisfied that the value of the sacred record is in 
no way impaired by the facts of geology. 

If it should be concluded that in the account 
which Moses gives us of the rivers of Eden we have 
the ideas of the current geography of his times, 
instead of a strictly accurate account of these riv- 
ers, could any thoughtful man, on that ground, have 
less regard for the spiritual doctrines and moral 
duties which Moses taught the world? If, in the 



Inspiration and Revelation. 6j 

Gospel, when John says of the pool of Bethesda, "An 
angel went down at a certain season into the pool, 
and troubled the waters, whosoever then first after 
the troubling of the waters stepped in was made 
whole of whatsoever disease he had," he relates 
current tradition instead of actual fact, will any- 
one discredit John's Gospel for that? 

There is a wide discrepancy between the He- 
brew and the Septuagint Scriptures in regard to the 
time which elapsed from Adam to the flood, and 
from the flood to the call of Abraham. Is the Sep- 
tuagint a correct translation, or was the Hebrew 
original changed after that translation was made? 
Is this question of dates a matter of importance in 
a record of God's dealing with men? If we cannot 
reliably fix the date of the birth of Enoch or the 
time of the flood, shall we trouble ourselves about it, 
when we cannot even date the birth of our Saviour? 

There are not a few persons to-day, among those 
who have not kept pace with the current discus- 
sion of these subjects, who hold that severe view 
of inspriration which we have been considering, and 
that idea of the inerrancy of Scripture which is its 
necessary corollary, and so, have left to themselves 
only the alternative of believing that which is un- 
reasonable, and which facts contradict, or surren- 
dering, altogether, their faith in the Bible, as the 
medium of divine revelation to men. Yet, the fact 
that their faith is so assailable is due only to an at- 
tempt, upon the part of theologians, to maintain, 
in regard to the Bible, theories which they have 



68 Foundations of Faith. 

no need to maintain — bare assumptions, which the 
Church has, in a measure, sanctioned as sound doc- 
trine, and by her effort to defend them burdened 
the defenders of revelation with useless impedi- 
menta. 

A distinction between inspiration and divine 
revelation, which is very important, h not always 
kept in view, and a fair statement of it may be help- 
ful at this point. 

Let us, then, recur to the assumed objections 
in regard to the inspiration of the books of 
Moses. If one should assert that, for the most 
part, the Pentateuch is but a history which an eye- 
witness and an actor in the scenes could have writ- 
ten, and needed no inspiration to write, would that 
view diminish the value of these books as a revela- 
tion of divine truth? Put the record upon the 
ground of any other history, and say that, written by 
Moses or some one else, it relates what did actually 
occur, and it becomes at once a revelation of God 
at even- step. The Israelites are a chosen people 
of God. God watches over them, and his special 
care of them makes their unique history. Moses 
himself is marvelously preserved and trained to be 
their deliverer from Egyptian bondage. God ap- 
pears to him at Horeb and commissions him for 
that work. Moses performs miracles in the land 
of Egypt. Many signs from heaven rebuke and 
scourge Pharaoh. The Passover is instituted with 
suggestion of the world's redemption. The Red 
Sea is crossed bv the Israelites drv-shod. It swal- 



Inspiration and Revelation. 69 

lows Pharaoh's army. Manna from heaven saves 
the chosen people from perishing in the wilderness. 
Moses receives the law upon Sinai. And so the 
history runs — a history of God's people and of 
God's dealings with his people, for their instruc- 
tion, and for establishing for all the world the doc- 
trines and duties of true religion. Now let it only 
be granted that this history tells the truth, and God 
is in every line of it. It is a revelation of God to 
men. That is its claim. It cannot be accepted as 
true history and not accepted as a divine revela- 
tion. If Moses is regarded simply as recording 
truths with which he became acquainted in per- 
sonal experience — a thing he was surely competent 
to do, and which he claimed to do — is it any more 
to be questioned that his writings give us a revela- 
tion of God, and that he was a chosen instrument 
of God for that purpose? 

An important fact, and one that we shall have 
need more fully to consider in the course of this 
treatise, is, that the revelations of God to our race 
are in the great facts of history. Those who passed 
through the same history with Moses saw God re- 
vealed in signs and wonders — "by a high hand and 
an outstretched arm." The record is but the his- 
tory of that revelation. The history was for after 
generations. It preserves and transmits revealed 
truths. It was not needed for those who person- 
ally saw and heard the things recorded. "The 
things written aforetime were written for our in- 
struction/' 



7<D Foundations of Faith. 

The revelation of God, which must confound un- 
belief, is a revelation of facts, imbedded in the his- 
tory of our race, and of which the Bible is chiefly 
a record. 

Whether we believe that Moses wrote the 
Pentateuch in its present form (it is certain that 
he did not write all of it), or receive it as a re- 
daction of early Hebrew history by a later writer, 
accepting only the facts of that history which a 
just historic criticism compels us to admit, Moses 
stands before us as the most august and sacred and 
influential person who has ever appeared in the 
world, with one single exception — that exception 
the Man of Nazareth. It is clear that the Penta- 
teuch must be accepted as the history of a special 
divine revelation by virtue of the facts which it 
records. 

In Moses the people justly recognized God's au- 
thority and mouthpiece. If much of the detail is 
commonplace — such as the length and fitting of 
the boards of the tabernacle, its covering of 
badger skins, or the order of march or encamp- 
ment — still the hand of God appears over all, vis- 
ible as the flame and darkness on Mount Sinai, or 
the pillar of fire that guarded Israel's night encamp- 
ment and led, as a bright cloud, their daily march. 

Casting aside ideas of inspiration which are not 
warranted by the record, and which only create 
difficulties in the way of intelligent faith, we have 
still to recognize Moses, upon the irrefutable facts 
of history, as one who received revelations of the 



Inspiration and Revelation. 71 

divine truth and will in, the most wonderful objec- 
tive expressions and assertions, and who had sub- 
jective guidance in all that way in which he led and 
taught the chosen people, respecting the will of 
Jehovah. 

We are also compelled to believe that, although 
to the people of Moses's time, the revelation was 
ocular and audible, and might long have been 
preserved by tradition, the purpose of God de- 
signed it for all the ages, and so the record of it is 
to be regarded as equally a matter of the divine 
providence as the original revelation in the events 
recorded. These views apply, not to the Penta- 
teuch alone, but to the whole historic record of 
the Bible. 

There is no single form or measure of inspira- 
tion which can apply to the entire Bible. In the 
prophecies, where events are foretold, which man 
by no means could foresee, direct inspiration of the 
thought recorded must be granted. Many of these 
revelations of the future were in visions, in which 
great national changes were known, by the proph- 
ets, to be foreshadowed, not definitely, as to detail 
or time. Events which should mark the course of 
the world's history appeared in panoramic visions 
to the seers — visions which they described, while 
they were, to themselves, in a measure, closed and 
sealed, to be understood perfectly only in the light 
of their fulfillment. 

Again, we find in the Bible prayers, exhortations, 
hymns of praise, where inspiration could scarcely 



72 Foundations of Faith. 

be other than the promptings of the Divine Spirit 
in devout souls — a manifestation of that Spirit 
which, by its holy aspirations, we know to be of 
God and not of man's own nature. 

There are theories respecting the method of in- 
spiration which it is not needful to discuss here. 
It will aid us to form at least a consistent view of 
the extent of inspiration to ask, What is its pur- 
pose and aim? 

Paul speaks of God-inbreathed Scripture, as be- 
ing profitable for "teaching, for reproof, for cor- 
rection, for instruction which is in righteousness, 
that the man of God may be complete, furnished 
completely unto every good work." 

Let us say, then, that the purpose of the Bible is 
to furnish us all needful knowledge of our duty be- 
fore God. Such revelation of duty appears in the 
doctrines which the Bible teaches of God, and 
man's relation to him, and to an eternal future. 
It appears in moral laws and precepts, and in the 
history of human lives, wherein are set forth the 
operations of grace and truth in individual souls, 
and God's dealing, in favor or displeasure, with men, 
according to their conduct. Especially is this pur- 
pose of revelation, and the full light of the revela- 
tion itself, seen in Jesus Christ, who completes, in 
his life and teaching and death, the manifestation 
of God to the world. 

Is it not enough that we hold the Bible to be a 
perfect and sufficient guide in morals? Is it a book 
to be pressed into service in controversies of 



Inspiration and Revelation. 73 

science? Because we hold its writers as infallible 
authority in the matter of duty to God, shall we 
invest every incident which the record connects 
with their teaching as a divine utterance? If a 
man is inspired to teach us our duty before God, 
must we assume that he is, therefore, inspired, and 
made infallible in history and geography and 
science? Is such an assumption demanded? Is it 
even logical? We prefer not to go into the contest 
with unbelief loaded with such assumptions as these. 
They are in no way essential to the one claim that 
the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Bible is a 
revelation to us of divine truth, and the perfect will 
of God, "that the man of God may be complete, 
furnished completely unto every good work." 

According to Paul's definition, we reckon the 
whole Bible to be inspired. In what way? While 
the various portions of the Bible suggest varying 
forms and degrees of divine enlightenment and 
guidance, there is one character of inspiration 
which covers the whole record. It is that faith in 
God and communion with him which put the sacred 
writers en rapport with the divine will, and enabled 
them to behold all things in a divine light; so that 
events of history and the experiences of personal 
life are continually set in a spiritual relation in their 
records. In the details of current history they are 
far removed from the sphere of the profane histo- 
rian. It is the moving of God's hand which they 
see; it is the revelation of God's will about which 
they are concerned. The sacred writers are, while 



74 Foundations of Faith. 

recording events which other historians have also 
recorded, interpreters to the world of the true sig- 
nificance of such events. God and God's will con- 
cerning men are thoughts ever dominant in their 
minds, and in relation to which all things take their 
places and teach their lessons. Here is continual 
divine influence, manifest in the record, and claimed 
by the writers, whose one mission was to teach the 
people in the ways of obedience to God. Under 
this broad definition of inspiration, which we con- 
ceive applies to all the canonical Scriptures of the 
Old and the New Testament various other forms 
and degrees of inspiration are manifest in different 
portions of the record. 

This view of divine inspiration is sufficient, and 
will not trammel us in the freest investigation of 
the claims of the Bible. It throws us upon the 
facts, giving place always for the recognition of 
God's hand, both in making the facts and securing 
to the world a true record of the same. The su- 
preme question is, Does the Bible give us a record 
of historic truths and of doctrines and moral teach- 
ings which evidence a direct revelation of God to 
the world? 



CHAPTER IX. 
The Bible — The Records and the Writers. 

The Bible, as it is known to the common Eng- 
lish reader of to-day, has come down to us through 
many vicissitudes. The Old Testament was pro- 
duced at various times and by various writers from 
the time of Moses, assumed to have been about 
B.C. 1490, till the time of the prophet Malachi, B.C. 
397. As to the sources of these records, and their 
arrangement in the present form of the Old Testa- 
ment canon, we shall speak hereafter. 

The Old Testament was translated into Greek 
in the city of Alexandria, in Egypt, by order of the 
King of Egypt, Ptolemy Philadelphus, who took 
this means of furthering a scheme to make the 
Greek language the universal language of the peo- 
ple he ruled. It is agreed that this translation was 
begun about B.C. 285. It is called the "Septuagint" 
version (the version of the seventy) because tradi- 
tion reports that seventy men were employed upon 
the work. This Septuagint version was the volume 
of sacred Scripture used by the Jews in Jesus' time, 
and from which Jesus and his apostles took the 
texts which they quoted. This version continued 
to be used by the Christian Church for many cen- 
turies. It is still the basis of the Scriptures used by 
the Greek Church; and the Douay Bible of the 
Roman Catholic Church was translated from the 

(75) 



76 Foundations of Faith. 

Vulgate of St. Jerome, whose translation was from 
the Septuagint. 

The rise of the Christian Church had the effect 
upon the Jews of turning them, with new devotion, 
10 the study of their ancient language, and aroused 
them to effort to perfect the canon of their Scrip- 
tures in the Hebrew text. They rejected the 
Septuagint because it was the version accepted by 
the Christians. Two prominent schools of Jewish 
scholars, known as Massoretes, one at Tiberias, in 
Galilee, the other at Sora, in the Euphrates Val- 
ley, were devoted to the work of collecting and 
verifying their Scriptures. The work was begun in 
the sixth century, and was not completed till the 
twelfth. The Septuagint and this Hebrew Bible 
differ widely in the chronology of the early ages, 
but as respects the record of facts, teachings, his- 
tory, law, prophecy, they are virtually one. The 
labor whch the Massoretes bestowed on the work 
of establishing the Hebrew text of their Scriptures 
was a great benefit to the Christian world, as its 
chief effect was to establish, substantially, the au- 
thority of the Scriptures which the Christians had 
accepted and used, whether from the Greek or He- 
brew reading. The English Bible — King James's 
version — was translated from the Massoretic He- 
brew of the Old Testament and the original Greek 
of the New. 

In our inquiry as to the sources of the sacred 
Scriptures and the authenticity of the records, we 
shall allow to historic criticism due importance 



The Bible. 77 

within its proper sphere. A divine revelation 
should stand all the tests of legitimate inquiry, 
and should come forth more clear, better estab- 
lished, and better understood because of such in- 
vestigation. We know not upon what ground the 
Bible can be received as the word of God, except 
that all the evidences which can be brought to bear 
upon the question make any other conclusion un- 
reasonable. We agree, also, that this question of 
the divine source and authority of the Bible can- 
not be closed by the dictum of any man, nor by the 
Church, but is to be reckoned, always, an open 
question to any one who would examine it anew. 
If, in the progress of knowledge, new facts are 
obtained and better canons of criticism are estab- 
lished, it is not too much to ask the Christian to 
subject his faith to the test of newly discovered 
truths. This, Christians have often been required 
to do, and have done it to their profit. The reve- 
lations of science have, again and again, broken 
down the dogmatism of men who were high in au- 
thority in the Church, but whose confident expo- 
sitions were only ignorant perversions of the sa- 
cred book. Under a decree of Pope Urbain XIIL, 
signed by Cardinals Felia, Guido, Desiderio, An- 
tonio, Belligero, and Fabricius, the astronomer 
Galileo, to escape death, did, June 22, 1663, fall on 
his knees and declare, "I abjure, curse, and detest 
the error and heresy of the motion of the earth 
around the sun." But the earth moved on, and 
astronomical science moved on, "and the thoughts 



78 Foundations of Faith. 

of men were widened by the process of the suns," 
and Galileo's view now controls the world. Mean- 
time, faith in the Bible has also grown stronger, 
and advanced apace. 

The good Mr. Cecil said: "When one awakens 
me from sleep, with the cry that my house is about 
to fall on my head, I rise from my bed, light my 
lamp, go down into my cellar, examine the pillars 
and arches and columns that support my dwelling, 
and if these are firm and unshaken, I return to my 
room, blow out my candle, and lie down to sleep. 
So, when the clamors of infidelity arouse me with 
some new alarm, I reexamine my faith at that 
point, and being confirmed, dismiss my fears. ,, 

But as respects historic criticism it must not be 
allowed to begin its investigations of the Bible his- 
tory by assumptions which beg the whole question 
of direct revelations from God. It may eliminate 
from profane history the story of Romulus and 
Remus, suckled by the wolf, and the story of Her- 
cules and his wonderful deeds, on the mere ground 
of the unreasonableness of these things. But, to 
dispose of the passage of the Red Sea and other 
miracles of the Bible record in such a way, is to re- 
fuse to the Bible that investigation which the very 
claim of the record, as a means of divine instruc- 
tion to man, legitimately demands. Even the 
story of Hercules would have to be credited if the 
experiences of men in after time and the develop- 
ments of history demanded such belief. The 
miracles of the Bible have their legitimate tests 



The Bible. 79 

in the purpose for which they were performed and 
the results which have followed from belief in 
them. The continuous evidence that they did 
occur has come down to us. 

It is in order to consider the Bible historically — 
to inquire concerning the authors who delivered its 
teachings to the world, the agents by whom those 
teachings were written down, and the circum- 
stances which affected the record. We need also 
to note in what estimation the Jews held these 
Scriptures, and in what manner they have been 
preserved and transmitted to us. 

A wide field is here opened before us, to which we 
can give but a hasty view — a view that will be 
profitable, mainly, in protecting us from the spirit 
of dogmatism in further investigations, by showing 
how little can be positively known respecting the 
authorship of the Jewish Scriptures, and by direct- 
ing our studies to issues of far more importance 
than any question that authorship involves. 

The word "bible," which is, in the English lan- 
guage, as in the Latin of the middle ages, used as 
a singular noun, is plural in its original Greek 
form, to. PifiXia, and means "the books." This title 
is given to a compilation of many separate books, 
produced by different authors, in ages widely sep- 
arated. 

The Bible is divided into two general sections, 
denominated, respectively, the Old and the New 
Testament; the Old Testament embracing all 
those Scriptures which are held sacred by the Jews, 



80 /foundations of Faith. 

also accepted by the Christians, and the New Tes- 
tament, the history and teachings of Jesus Christ 
and his apostles, accepted by Christians only, as a 
further development of the religion which began 
to be revealed in the Jewish Scriptures, consum- 
mating its manifest scheme and fulfilling its proph- 
ecies. 

The word "testament," from the Latin testa- 
mentum, is a somewhat imperfect rendering of the 
Greek SuaOrjxr], "covenant." The central idea set 
forth in each of the two general sections of the 
Bible is that of a covenant relation established be- 
tween God and a people who are, in a peculiar 
sense, his chosen. The Jews claimed to be a peo- 
ple whom the one true God, Jehovah, had chosen 
from among the nations, to be the recipients of an 
especial revelation of divine truth, and the subjects 
of an especial providential guidance. A people 
with whom God had established a covenant. 

Jesus Christ also made prominent the covenant 
relation between God and his people. He set the 
conditions of obtaining and maintaining the divine 
favor upon higher spiritual ground than was mani- 
fest in the Old Testament. He represented himself 
as the way to God, the Mediator between God and 
men. By faith in him and obedience to his teach- 
ings, the fellowship of God the Father is secured. 
To reject him is to be rejected of the Father. Thus 
Jesus claimed to unite his followers to God by a 
new covenant, sealed by his blood. Christians call 
the revelation through Christ the New Testament, 



The Bible. 81 

although it is but the consummation of the condi- 
tions and promises of the old covenant, and shows 
us only the perfecting of it. 

In our English Bible the Old Testament is di- 
vided into thirty-nine books and the New Testa- 
ment into twenty-seven. The history of the Old 
Testament canon will show that its books, as they 
now stand, do not represent different authors in 
every case, nor different books by the same author. 
Any arrangement of these books with which his- 
tory makes us acquainted will be found to be arbi- 
trary — the work of redactors, and not any arrange- 
ment of original authors. The Jews still divide 
their Scriptures into twenty-four books, and at an 
earlier period they made but twenty-two books. 
Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are not divided in 
the Hebrew collection. Ruth is embraced in the 
book of Judges, and Lamentations in Jeremiah, and 
the twelve minor prophets in one book. An earlier 
arrangement united Ezra and Nehemiah and put 
Job with the minor prophets. 

We know but little, certainly, as to who were the 
authors of most of these books, or when they were 
written. Except in the case of the prophets, who re- 
fer often to themselves by name as the authors of 
their predictions and teachings, the Hebrew rec- 
ords are anonymous. No one wrote a book then 
as now — a complete volume with the author's 
name — nor did compilers and copyists indicate the 
sources of their information. The writings which 

came originally from many different authors were 

6 



82 Foundations of Faith. 

likely, in course of time, to become united in one 
book. Even that which was attributed to certain 
authors may not have been written by them, but 
may have come from them orally, and have been 
preserved by oral teaching through many genera- 
tions before it was written at all. Much which the 
Old Testament contains was probably thus taught 
the people long before it was committed to writ- 
ing. So long as inspired men taught the people by 
divine authority, the idea of collecting all their de- 
liverances for the guidance of the people could 
hardly have occurred. The living voice, and the 
divine authority in it, took the place of everything, 
save that, always, Moses was supreme, and the law 
of Moses imperative, and the highest function of 
inspired teachers was to bring the people to re- 
gard the Lord Jehovah and the laws he had given 
through Moses. 

But when the voice of prophecy ceased, as it did 
with Malachi, about four hundred years before 
Christ, and the people became aware that no 
longer any living divinely inspired teacher ap- 
peared to guide them, then, the authority of the 
priest became preeminent, as expounders of the 
truth, as holy men of old, who were moved by the 
Holy Ghost, had uttered it. Then all the utter- 
ances of inspired men became a sacred treasure, 
as representing the full depositum of divine rev- 
elation to the people. Out of these conditions 
grew the collecting of the sacred Scriptures and 
the forming of the sacred canon. This was not 



The Bible. 83 

a work to be done all at once. The reader will 
readily suppose that much time would elapse be- 
fore all the Scriptures were collected and all ques- 
tions settled respecting their right to be recog- 
nized as inspired. « 

It was only in reference to a small portion of the 
Scriptures, however, that doubt as to divine au- 
thority was ever entertained; and, although the au- 
thority of the Jewish Church was never formally 
and finally expressed on the subject, until the 
Synod of Jamnia, held in the year A.D. 90, yet, cen- 
turies before this time the entire collection of writ- 
ings, now embraced in the Old Testament canon, 
was held as sacred Scripture by most of the Jews. 

In the prologue to the book of Ecclesiasticus, 
Jesus, the son of Sirach, the son of Jesus, repre- 
sents himself as taking up and completing a work 
begun by his grandfather, of whom he says: "My 
grandfather, Jesus, when he had much given him- 
self to the reading of the law and the prophets and 
other books of our fathers, and had gotten therein 
good judgment, was drawn on also himself to write 
something pertaining to learning and wisdom." 

Here mention is made of the three divisions of 
the Scriptures — the Law, the Prophets, and the 
Sacred Writings; and, as the author, who wrote 
about 200 B.C., refers to his grandfather as a de- 
vout student of these Scriptures, we have excel- 
lent reason for believing that, whatever contro- 
versies afterwards arose concerning some of the 
books, the collection was never changed, from a 



S4 Foundations of Faith. 

period before the birth of Christ two hundred and 
fifty years or more. 

The Septuagint version of the Old Testament is 
a Greek translation which began to be made, as 
formerly stated, as early as 285 B.C. This transla- 
tion the Jews, in our Saviour's time, accepted and 
used, and it was from it that Jesus and his disciples 
quoted in their references to the Holy Scriptures. 
But this Greek translation contains substantially 
all the Old Testament canon. 

Thus it appears that although we cannot defi- 
nitely determine when the latest record of the Old 
Testament was made, or at what time all the books 
were first collected, yet we may believe that all 
was done within a century after Malachi or as early 
as three hundred years before Christ. 

As to the care with which the Scriptures, when 
cnce accepted, were guarded against change, there 
is no question. 

The oldest list of the sacred books of the Jews, 
of which we have any knowledge, is that furnished 
by Josephus about A.D. 85. In regard to these 
Scriptures Josephus uses this language: "For we 
have not an innumerable multitude of books among 
us, but only twenty-two books, which contain the 
records of all the past times, which are justly be- 
lieved to be divine. Of them five belong to Moses. 
But as to the time from the death of Moses to the 
reign of Artaxerxes, King of Persia, the prophets 
who were after Moses wrote down what was done 
in their times in thirteen books. The remaining 



The Bible. 85 

four books contain hymns to God and precepts for 
the conduct of human life. It is true our history- 
has been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, 
but has not been esteemed of the like authority 
with the former by our fathers, because there has 
not been an exact succession of prophets since that" 
time; and how firmly we have given credit to these 
books of our own nation is evident by what we do ; 
for during so many ages as have already passed, no 
one has been so bold as either to add anything to 
them, to take anything from them, or to make any 
change in them; but it has been natural to all Jews 
immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem 
these books to contain divine doctrines, and to per- 
sist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for 
them/' 

The lyrical books to which Josephus refers in the 
foregoing are Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and 
the Song of Solomon. In the thirteen prophets of 
which he speaks, Job is included. 

Notwithstanding the very positive deliverance of 
Josephus on the subject, history shows us that in 
his own time there was a persistent contest be- 
tween the rabbis of the school of Shammai and 
the school of Hillel whether certain books should 
not be excluded from the canon. The school of 
Shammai would have rejected Ecclesiastes and the 
Song of Solomon. The synod of Jamnia, held 
A.D. 90, being controlled by the Hillelites, re- 
ceived both of these books, and declared them 
canonical, but they had been generally so regarded 



86 Foundations of Faith. 

long before. This action we may regard as the 
authoritative closing of the Old Testament canon 
so far as the Jewish Church was concerned. 

The Jews divided their Scriptures into three sec- 
tions according to their estimation of their dignity 
and importance. These sections were denomina- 
ted "The Law," "The Prophets/' and "The Sacred 
Writings." The first division included the first five 
books of the Bible attributed to Moses; the second 
division embraced Joshua, Judges (with Ruth), 
Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the 
twelve minor prophets. The Sacred Writings were 
Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of 
Solomon, Daniel, Chronicles, Ezra (with Nehe- 
miah), and Esther. The Jews do not give Daniel 
the rank of a prophet, although they acknowledge 
him to have been a man inspired of God, and whose 
writings contain important prophecies. 

The question of authorship, as it applies to these 
three sections of Scripture, is important chiefly in 
regard to the first — the books attributed to Mo- 
ses, and which clearly lay the basis for all the rest. 

"The Sacred Writings, ,, being given us to illus- 
trate moral truths and enforce doctrines and duties 
accepted, have, in themselves, their claim to re- 
gard. The book of Psalms is a collection of hymns 
from various authors extending from Moses to Mal- 
achi, a period of one thousand years. David holds 
the chief place among these, and the whole book 
is often spoken of as "The Psalms of David." We 
are no more concerned to know who wrote each 



The Bible. 87 

separate psalm than to know who wrote each sep- 
arate hymn in the Methodist hymn book. 

The Proverbs are also from many authors — a col- 
lection of wise sayings, in common use among the 
people, and which had come from many wise men 
in course of time. Among these Solomon is given 
the chief place. 

Ecclesiastes is a sermon on the vanities of life, 
v/hich takes the career of Solomon for its text, and 
puts its speeches in the mouth of Solomon. But 
whether Solomon or some one else was the author 
is not known. None of the Bible scholars or crit- 
ics have been assured of the authorship of the book 
of Job, or of Esther, or the Songs of Solomon, or 
the book of Dniel. The books of Chronicles, Ezra, 
and Nehemiah were written, no doubt, by Ezra. 
But Chronicles is a compilation from state papers 
and other documents, many of which are referred 
to by the writer. 

As respects the prophets, they speak of them- 
selves as the authors of the utterances attributed 
to them. No serious doubt has been entertained 
that the names affixed to the prophetic books rep- 
resent their real authors. But it cannot, with so 
much confidence, be claimed that these prophets 
wrote out personally all the prophecies which they 
uttered, or that there were not other prophecies of 
theirs also, which never were written at all. Jere- 
miah testifies that it was not until he had prophe- 
sied for twenty-three years that the Lord com- 
manded him to write what he had spoken. Com- 



88 Foundations of Faith. 

pare Jeremiah xxv. 1-3 and xxxvi. 1. Some modern 
critics have claimed, with considerable show of evi- 
dence, that the work of two prophets is included 
under the single title of Isaiah, and they make the 
division between the words of Isaiah, the son of 
Amos, and their Deuteros Isaiah, who is assumed to 
have written during the captivity, at the end of 
chapter xxxix. A different style, a different point 
of view, and the absence of the name of Isaiah from 
the section beginning with chapter 1. and extending 
to the close of the book, are significant facts. 

As the discussion about authorship has little im- 
portance, save as it refers to the Pentateuch, we 
give a little space to the consideration of this sub- 
ject. 

It is agreed that the Pentateuch, in its present 
form, came from the hand of Ezra, the scribe, who 
arranged the order of the sacred books and wrote 
them out in the modern Hebrew characters, when 
the Jews had returned from the Babylonish cap- 
tivity. Ezra was, according to the record, a 
learned scribe who read to the people the Law of 
Moses, the Book of the Covenant, as stated in the 
eighth and ninth chapters of Nehemiah. He, with 
the assistance of Nehemiah, brought the people to 
ratify the covenant, and set up the ritual of the tem- 
ple service. But it is absurd to suppose that Ezra 
was, in any sense, the author of the Pentateuch. 
He wrote it out in the Chaldee letters. He probably 
substituted, in places, modern names for such as had 
become obsolete, and interpolated some explana- 



The Bible. 89 

tory passages, but it is unreasonable to believe that 
he brought the people to accept as the teachings of 
Moses, and as an authority through all their past 
history, laws which were not known to their past 
history at all. It is impossible to consider the course 
of Ezra, weakening his following at Jerusalem, 
driving from him influential men, and imposing 
upon the people who adhered to him the most se- 
vere laws, and upon himself the heaviest burdens, 
to accomplish a selfish scheme. Nothing but the 
highest sense of responsibility before God could ex- 
plain Ezra's course. Nor could anything but the 
recognition of Moses as supreme authority explain 
the conduct of the people. 

Moses was an authority which the Jews never 
questioned. His authority had been confessed 
through the whole life of their nation. Their 
entire history is in testimony that they held 
their moral law, their statutes and ordinances, 
and their religous ceremonies from Moses. And 
only with the faith that these were revelations 
of the will of God could Ezra have accomplished 
the work he did in bringing the people to con- 
fess their sins and enter into covenant with Je- 
hovah at the reading of the law, to keep the law 
of Moses. 

We need not even insist that the contents of the 
Pentateuch had ever been fully written out before 
Ezra's time. Much of the teaching was oral in the 
earlier periods of Jewish history, and especially so 
in religion, for the institutions for perpetuating the 



90 Foundations of Faith. 

true religion provided for its teaching by word of 
mouth from the priests and prophets. We have 
among us, to-day, societies which suggest how per- 
fectly and uniformly lessons, which are never com- 
mitted to writing, can be taught orally. We have 
in Proverbs xxv. i a suggestion that the matter 
there committed to writing had been preserved 
orally for centuries: "These are the proverbs of 
Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, King of 
Judah, copied out." But Hezekiah was two hun- 
dred and seventy-five years after Solomon. The 
priests and the schools of the prophets may have 
preserved much of Moses's teaching orally, till the 
time of Ezra, the scribe. This would not make 
Moses any less the author of the Pentateuch. 

But the evidence that Moses personally wrote 
these books is so strong that no other view it at all 
tenable. They contain much internal testimony of 
Mosaic authorship. The claim of such authorship 
is frequent in the record. In Deuteronomy, xxxi. 
9-12, we read: "And Moses wrote this law, and de- 
livered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which 
bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and unto 
all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded 
them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in 
the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of 
tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear be- 
fore the Lord thy God in the place which he shall 
choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in 
their hearing. Gather the people together, men, 
and women, and chldren, and thy 'stranger that is 



The Bible. 91 

within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they 
may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe 
to do all the words of this law." 

The book of the law was to be kept in the ark of 
the covenant. Deuteronomy xxxi. 26: "Take this 
book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of 
the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be 
there for a witness against thee." Also in Exodus 
xl. 20 we have: "And he took and put the testi- 
mony into the ark, and set the staves on the ark, 
and put the mercy seat above upon the ark." Josh- 
ua viii. 32 also bears testimony that Moses wrote 
the law: "And he wrote there upon the stones a 
copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the 
presence of the children of Israel." 

There are passages which suggest that Moses 
wrote not only the law, but the history of the 
journeys of the Israelites. "And Moses wrote their 
goings out according to their journeys by the 
commandment of the Lord: and these are their 
journeys according to their goings out." (Num- 
bers xxxiii. 2.) "And the Lord said unto Moses, 
Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse 
it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out 
the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven." 
(Exodus xvii. 14.) 

The foregoing passages will be sufficient to call 
to the mind of the reader that evidences of Moses's 
authorship of the Pentateuch abound in the text 
itself. 

There are facts recorded in the history of Judah 



92 Foundations of Faith* 

and Israel which are explicable only on the as- 
sumption that the people at large had some knowl- 
edge of Moses, and knew that he had delivered to 
the people laws which were of unquestioned di- 
vine authority. One of these is recorded in 2 Kings 
xviii. and 2 Chronicles xxix., xxx. The good king, 
Hezekiah, calls both the kingdoms of Judah and 
Israel to assemble at Jerusalem to confess their 
sins and renew their covenant with God. The mes- 
sengers went throughout the kingdom of Israel 
with this message: "Ye children of Israel, turn 
again unto the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Israel, and he will return to the remnant of you, 
that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of 
Assyria. And be not ye like your fathers, and like 
your brethren, which trespassed against the Lord 
God of their fathers, who therefore gave them 
lip to desolation, as ye see. Now be ye not stiff- 
necked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves 
unto the Lord, and enter into his sanctuary, which 
he hath sanctified forever: and serve the Lord your 
God, that the fierceness of his wrath mav turn away 
from you." 

The fact that multitudes of people out of the 
neighboring kingdom of Israel joined with those of 
Judah, and came at this call to keep the Passover 
at Jerusalem, seems only possible upon the as- 
sumption that thev well knew of their departure 
from the law. 

The very temple and the temple service were wit- 
ness to Moses's teaching and authority. When- 



The Bible, 93 

ever the people departed from the law, the temple 
and temple worship fell into neglect, "The ways of 
Zion mourned because none came to the solemn 
feasts" — the feasts which Moses had commanded. 
In the temple the priests and Levites served, of- 
fering the sacrifices and teaching the law as Moses 
had commanded. Here, in this return to the God 
of their fathers, it is noted: "The priests and Le- 
vites stood in their places, after their manner, ac- 
cording to the law of Moses, the man of God/ 
The temple was an historic monument, and no one 
can question that the temple service flourished or 
declined according to the faithfulness of the people 
to the religion of their fathers or their departure 
from it. The laws and institutions of Moses were 
fostered and taught in the temple. His authority 
was always appealed to, to bring the people to the 
old paths. Moses is ever in religion and law, as 
in history, the founder of the Jewish nation and its 
peculiar institutions. 

With one voice the Jews attrioute their national 
polity and religion to Moses. With one voice 
they agree that he wrote the Pentateuch. Their 
testimony, comiug down from the earliest ages 
of their history, fortified as it is by evidences in- 
grained in the very character of the people, can- 
not be refuted. It cannot, indeed, be reasonably 
questioned. 

The argument advanced by some, that the Book 
of the Law found buried under the hibbish of the 
temple, by Hilkiah the priest, during the reign of 



94 Foundations of Faith. 

Josiah, B.C. 640, shows that the book was then first 
written; and that it was a forgery of the priests, to 
get control of the mind of the king, is not worthy 
of a serious mind. The terrible corruption and 
idolatry of the preceding king, Manasseh, and his 
effort to stamp out religion, might well be be- 
lieved to have resulted in the destruction of the 
books of the law, so far as known, and the loss or 
hiding of this in the rubbish of the temple. It is 
the old story of the temple's desertion when the 
law of Moses was ignored. The grandest work of 
all their history, their noblest monument of archi- 
tecture, was neglected as Moses was neglected. 
The revival which took place under the publishing 
of the law in the time of Josiah has all the argu- 
ments for the previous regard for Moses and the 
unquestioning acceptance of his authority that we 
have found in the history of the reformation under 
Hezekiah. 

There is a copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch, 
written in the ancient Semitic character, such as 
the Hebrews used down to the time of the cap- 
tivity, but never after. There are strong reasons 
to believe that this Pentateuch was so much of the 
sacred Scriptures as were possessed by the Hebrews 
at the division of the kingdom in the days of Jero- 
boam, and that the Samaritans have possessed it 
since that time. 

That is the claim which the little band of Samari- 
tans, who live at the city of Nablous (Shechem) 
make for the Scriptures which they sacredly cher- 



The Bible. 95 

ish. And the priest who officiates in their temple 
to-day claims that the document was written out 
by Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, 
the son of Aaron, and that when the ten tribes were 
carried into captivity a copy or copies, of the Pen- 
tateuch, including Joshua and Judges, was pre- 
served among the poor remnant of the people who 
were left; and we know such a remnant was left in 
the land. 

Bishop Foster makes no doubt that the Samar- 
itan Scriptures have been in existence among these 
people from the time the kingdom of Israel was 
established under Jeroboam, and as the Samaritan 
Pentateuch corresponds with the Hebrew, the sub- 
stantial existence of this part of the Scriptures in 
the days of the first kings of Israel cannot be 
doubted. 

The uniform testimony of Jewish tradition to 
the fact that Moses wrote the Pentateuch is of 
more authority than all the conjecture of the 
critics. 

If the methods of some of the higher critics are 
allowed, we can prove that the constitution of the 
United States was not written till after the war 
which freed the slaves. For does not the consti- 
tution declare that "all men are born free and 
equal"? A higher critic, not knowing when our 
constitution was framed, and seeking to fix the 
date from historic facts, would surely declare that 
the historic fact that slaves were held till the Civil 
War, and at that time made free, proved that this 



96 Foundations of Faith* 

constitution, declaring all men to be born free and 
equal, could not have been original in this govern- 
ment, or had a date earlier than the freeing of the 
slaves. We give this as an illustration of the meth- 
ods from which some Bible critics have drawn the 
most confident conclusions. Continuous and uni- 
form tradition, we insist, is of tenfold more value 
than such criticisms. 

It has been denied that Homer wrote the sub- 
lime epic which bears his name. Books have been 
written to prove that Lord Bacon wrote the inim- 
itable dramas which bear the name of Shakespeare. 
What do such doubts avail? These immortal pro- 
ductions live. They are indubitable proofs of great 
authors. They reveal the characteristics of those 
authors. Change of name makes no change in our 
conception of the genius and character of the 
writer. And if these productions had come down 
to us without even a tradition of their authorship, 
historic criticism would fix their probable place and 
date, from their point of view, the nature of their 
metaphors and allusions, the customs of the peo- 
ple indicated, the stage of development shown in 
the language in which the authors wrote, and the 
characters of the writers would appear in their 
works. 

But in the case of one to whom is attributed 
not merely the authorship of a book, but a ca- 
reer which has influenced the world for all time, 
the testimonies are far more numerous and strong. 
The statesman lives in the state he has established, 



The Bible. 97 

the institutions he has founded. The founder of a 
religion or philosophical system lives in the system 
he has taught, and one who has been great in the 
activities of history leaves an abiding record in 
historic facts. Here is a people who tell us Moses 
was the founder of their institutions, the founder 
of their faith, the deliverer and leader of their peo- 
ple, and their institutions and faith stand through 
the ages to bear witness of the fact, and Moses is 
celebrated in history and in song through all their 
literature, as the great prophet of God who gave 
them freedom, religion, and national life. Here 
is the unbroken testimony of Moses's own people 
to all this. What a pitch of arrogance and pre- 
sumption have the critics reached who attempt to 
set their logic against these facts. The method of 
historic criticism which they follow, if allowed, 
would authorize them to rewrite and reconstruct 
the whole history of the past. 

But there are some things in the Pentateuch 
which Moses did not write. Certainly no one can 
doubt that the last chapter of Deuteronomy, in 
which Moses's death and burial are related was 
added in a later time. There is hardly room to 
doubt that the passage in Genesis xxxvi., regard- 
ing the kings of Edom, was written centuries after 
Moses's time, not only because of the lapse of time 
indicated in the long succession there detailed, but 
because the sixteenth verse clearly indicates that 
the record was made after kings began to reign 
in Israel. The author who wrote, 'These are the 
7 



98 Foundations of Faith. 

kings that reigned in the land of Edom before 
there reigned any king over the children of Israel," 
certainly had knowledge of the time when kings 
began to reign in Israel, and wrote after that time. 
In Genesis xiv. 14, we are told that Abraham pur- 
sued Lot's captors unto Dan; but we are else- 
where told that the original name of the city was 
Laish (see Joshua xix. 47; Judges xviii. 27-29). 
The city was not called Dan in the time of Moses, 
but took that name after the division of the land 
of Canaan to the tribes of Israel. Also in Genesis 
xxiii. 2, we read that "Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; 
the same is Hebron." And in Genesis xiii. 18, the 
place is mentioned simply as Hebron. But in 
Joshua xiv. 15 and Judges i. 10, we learn that Kir- 
jath-arba was the old name, and Hebron that which 
was given the place centuries after, when the tribes 
took possession of Canaan. Moses therefore could 
not have written of Hebron, and this passage in 
Genesis is from a later writer, or else the original 
record has been revised and the later name of He- 
bron substituted for the earlier name of Kirjath- 
arba. This latter is probably the correct view. 
As we have before suggested, Ezra may have sub- 
stituted later names for some that were obsolete, 
and added in some places explanatory notes. 



CHAPTER X. 
The Records and the Writers 

Respecting the New Testament canon we may 
observe first, that the idea of a collection of sacred 
writings, which were to be held as absolute au- 
thority in matters of religious faith and duty, was 
fully established before the Christian movement 
began. The Jews had such a collection, and Jesus 
himself stood upon that ground, asserting the au- 
thority of the law and the prophets, and only 
claiming to be an interpreter of the Old Scriptures, 
and to lead forward in the way which they clearly 
pointed out. While he claimed to be an original 
revealer of truth, he yet accepted all former revela- 
tions, and was willing that his own teaching should 
be tested by any fair interpretation of them. There 
could be no contradictions or inconsistencies in the 
unfoldings of the purpose of God toward men. 

Both Jesus and his disciples drew their texts 
from the Old Testament. One will readily under- 
stand that it could not be that the words of Jesus 
and his disciples should also be accepted as divine 
revelations until their authority was fully tested. 
In this case, as in the Old Testament, it must also 
be seen that the original revelation was not in the 
making of the record, but in the facts which the 
historian preserved — namely, the acts and words 
of Jesus and his apostles. 

LofC. (99) 



IOO Foundations of Faith. 

The time at which the history was written, and 
the evidences of its correctness, are the questions 
in controversy between Christians and infidels. As 
it is claimed that all the writings of the New Testa- 
ment are from the apostles of Jesus, except the 
Gospels of Mark and Luke, who are both repre- 
sented as contemporaries and companions of the 
apostles, it becomes necessary for Christian apol- 
ogists to show proofs of this claim, by evidence 
that these writings were produced in the apostolic 
times. 

The earliest of these writings were the apostolic 
epistles. Letters to the churches, written by the 
apostles during their ministry, and which were pre- 
served by the churches, and read in their public 
assemblies, would be, in the natural order, the first 
Christian Scriptures, accepted by the Christians 
themselves as being of divine authority, proceeding 
from those who had personally learned of Jesus, 
and were personally commissioned to teach by him. 

About these epistles there has been little con- 
troversy, for the facts of the remarkable career of 
Jesus of Nazareth at the time stated, and of the 
work of his immediate disciples, and the great 
movement resulting therefrom, can, by no means, 
be questioned, being authenticated by contempo- 
rary history, and by results which have been con- 
tinuous and most prominent in the subsequent 
course of the w r orld, even down to our time. 

In A.D. 64, history records the first persecution 
of the Christians under Nero. This was only thirty- 



The Records and the Writers. 101 

four years after the death of Christ. But even at 
that time the Christian movement had spread 
through the civilized world. Referring to this first 
persecution, and the cause of it, the Roman histo- 
rian, Tacitus, tells us that it was an effort on the 
part of Nero, the emperor, to turn away from him- 
self the suspicion, in the minds of the populace, 
that he had contrived the burning of Rome. He 
says: "In order, therefore, to put a stop to the re- 
port, he laid the guilt and inflicted the severest 
punishments upon a sect of people who were held 
in abhorrence fcr their crimes, and called by the 
vulgar Christians. The founder of that name was 
Christ, who suffered death in the reign of Tibe- 
rius, under his procurator Pontius Pilate. This 
pernicious superstition, thus checked for a while, 
broke out again; and spread, not only over Judea, 
where the evil originated, but through Rome also, 
whither all things that are shameful and horrible 
find their way, and are practiced. Accordingly the 
first who were apprehended confessed, and then on 
their information a vast multitude were convicted, 
not so much of the crime of setting Rome on fire 
as of hatred to mankind; and when they were put 
to death, mockery was added to their sufferings; 
for they were either disguised in the skins of beasts 
and worried to death by dogs, or they were cruci- 
fied, or they were clothed in some inflammable cov- 
ering, and when the day was closed were burned 
as lights to illumine the night. Nero lent his gar- 
dens for this exhibition, and also held the shows 



102 Foundations of Faith, 

of the circus, mingling with the people in the dress 
of a charioteer, or observing the spectacle from his 
chariot." (Annals, xv. 44.) 

As respects the Christian Scriptures, no one 
could think it reasonable that the original records 
should be produced and their authorship identi- 
fied. No complete copy of Homer dates back 
further than the thirteenth century. The earliest 
extant copy of Herodotus, one of the most ancient 
of historians, is no older than the ninth century, 
while there is but ony copy of Virgil that goes back 
of the fourth century. But of the New Testament 
we have more manuscripts than of any book in ex- 
istence, and some of these date back to a period 
within two centuries of the time of the apostles 
of our Lord. The manner in which the writings 
of the New Testament have been preserved is re- 
markable. No other ancient books can be traced 
back so near the original records. There are four 
manuscript copies of the New Testament which 
are very ancient. 

The "Codex Bezae" has both a Greek and a 
Latin text in parallel columns. Beza obtained it 
from a monastery in Lyons in 1062, and in 1581 
presented it to the University of Cambridge, En- 
gland, in which library it is now preserved. It is a 
quarto, ten by eight inches. It is supposed that 
this copy was made about the middle of the sixth 
century, but it was transcribed from a much older 
text. 

The "Codex Alexandrinus," we have reason to 



The Records and the Writers. 103 

believe, is older than the manuscript discovered by 
Beza. It was brought to Rome at an early date, 
and its history is not known. It is from its char- 
acter that its age is approximately fixed. It con- 
tains nearly all of the New Testament, and is writ- 
ten in capital letters upon quarto leaves of vellum, 
thirteen by ten inches in size. There are no spaces 
between the words, and scarcely any punctuation. 
It is believed, by competent scholars and critics, 
that it could not have been executed later than 
450 A.D. 

The "Codex Vaticanus" has been in the Vatican 
library for more than four hundred years, but when 
it was placed there is unknown. The date of its 
execution is put at about A.D. 350. 

The "Codex Sinaiticus" was discovered by 
Tischendorf, in the library of the convent of St. 
Catherine, on Mt. Sinai, in 1859. It contains the 
whole of the New Testament, written on leaves of 
vellum in capital letters. There are scarcely any 
marks of punctuation, and no separation of words. 
It was done about A.D. 350. 

There are probably complete manuscripts of the 
New Testament older than any of these, for people 
in the earlier ages consigned to the debris of the 
past treasures which became of inestimable value 
when discovered by later generations. The "Codex 
Sinaiticus," now regarded as the most valuable of 
all ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, was 
revealed to the great German scholar Tischendorf, 
while a guest in the convent of St. Catherine, in 



104 Foundations of Faith. 

the rubbish which the nuns brought him to light 
his fire. Besides these ancient manuscripts of the 
New Testament, there have been discovered manu- 
scripts of other books which prove the early ex- 
istence of these Scriptures. 

The same convent of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, 
where Tischendorf discovered the precious manu- 
script above mentioned, has proved, since that 
time, a treasure house of other invaluable records. 
There, in 1889, Prof. Rendel Harris discovered the 
Syraic manuscript of the Apology of Aristides. 
This work, it is known, was presented to the Ro- 
man emperor Hadrian, at Athens, in A.D. 125. 
The author of this work sets forth the character of 
the Christian movement of his time, in this gen- 
eral outline: "The Christians reckon the beginning 
of their religion from Jesus Christ, who is named 
the Son of God Most High; and it is said that God 
came down from heaven, and from a Hebrew virgin 
took and clad himself with flesh, and in a daughter 
of man there dwelt the son of God. This is taught 
from the gospel, which a little while ago was spoken 
among them as being preached; wherein, if ye also 
will read, ye will comprehend the power that is 
upon it. This Jesus, then, was born of the tribe 
of the Hebrews, and he had twelve disciples, in 
order that a certain dispensation might be fulfilled. 
He was pierced by the Jews, and he died and was 
buried; and they say that after three days he rose 
and ascended to heaven; and then these twelve dis- 
ciples went forth into the known parts of the world, 



The Records and the Writers. 105 

and taught concerning his greatness, with all hu- 
mility. And on this account those also who to-day- 
believe in this preaching are called Christians, who 
are well known." 

Again in 1892 this convent of St. Catherine 
yielded up a most valuable treasure. Mrs. Agnes 
Smith Lewis and Mrs. James Y. Gibson, English 
ladies and accomplished scholars, while guests at 
the convent were shown a very ancient palimpsest 
manuscript. (A palimpsest is a second writing over 
a former record, the first having been painted out.) 
What they saw upon the surface was a history of 
the devotion of some Christian women; but as the 
cement upon which this was written was broken 
off in places, it revealed an earlier writing in Syriac. 
The ladies were permitted to photograph parts of 
the manuscript, which photographs they took 
back to England. These they showed to Prof. 
Bensley and Mr. Burkitt, of the British Museum. 
These gentlemen found that the first writing rep- 
resented an early Syriac translation of the Gospels. 
Prof, and Mrs. Bensley, Mr. and Mrs. Burkitt, and 
Prof. Rendel Harris accompanied Mrs. Lewis back 
to the convent, and the manuscript, by the use of 
acids, was made legible, and was copied. Textual 
critics reckon this to be one of the very earliest 
versions of the Gospels, older than either the 
Peshito or Crutonian version. 

For earlier witness of the existence of the New 
Testament Scriptures than that which is present- 
ed in any preserved copies, we go to the writ- 



106 Foundations of Faith. 

ings of the fathers. We find that at a very early 
period writers upon Christianity, both defenders 
and opposers, recognize the New Testament Scrip- 
tures, and quote extensively from them. 

Irenseus was bishop of Lyons in France, and 
wrote in the latter half of the second century. He 
was born in Asia Minor, and his youth was spent 
amid the scenes of the labors of the apostles John 
and Paul. He w T as a pupil of Polycarp, and Poly- 
carp had been taught, personally, by the apostle 
John. Referring to his association with Polycarp, 
Irenaeus writes in his letter to Florinus: "The les- 
sons of childhood are incorporated with the mind 
and grow with its growth, so that I can tell, even 
the very place, where the blessed Polycarp used to 
sit and discourse, and his going out and coming in, 
and the nature of his life, and the appearance of 
his person, and the discourses which he delivered 
to the multitude, and how he related his inter- 
course with John, and with the rest of those who 
had seen the Lord, and how he had remembered 
their words, and what he had heard from them 
concerning the Lord, and concerning his miracles 
— how Polycarp declared all these things in a. 
manner agreeable to the Scriptures, as he had re- 
ceived them from those who were eyewitness of the 
word of life." Here is testimony given not more 
than a hundred and thirty years after the crucifix- 
ion of Christ, probably earlier, which refers to the 
Scriptures which contain the record of Christ's 
work. 



The Records and the Writers. 107 

Respecting the origin of the four Gospels, Ire- 
nseus writes: "Now Matthew published his treatise 
on the Gospel among the Hebrews, in their own 
dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching in 
Rome and founding the church there. But after 
their death, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of 
Peter, also wrote down what Peter had preached, 
and delivered it to us. And Luke also, the fol- 
lower of Paul, wrote out in a book the Gospel 
which was preached by that apostle. Afterwards 
John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned 
upon his breast — he, too, published a Gospel, 
while he was living at Ephesus in Asia." 

Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, wrote a defense 
of Christianity about A.D. 180, in which the Gos- 
pels of Matthew, Luke, and John are named. 

The works of Clement of Alexandria quote ex- 
tensively from all four of the Gospels. Clement 
died A.D. 220. 

To these testimonies we can add that of Tertul- 
lian of Carthage, a voluminous writer in regard to 
Christianity, who refers to the records upon which 
the faith of the Church rested, as documents well 
and widely known. 

The witness of these eminent men, placed at 
points widely separated, so as to represent almost 
the whole civilized world at that time, shows us 
not only that the gospel records then existed, but 
that they were well known, as we may say, through- 
out the world. The Church was an institution well 



108 Foundations of Faith. 

established and claiming a direct and well-known 
history from the time of Jesus Christ. 

Even at the time of the writers whom we have 
named, Christianity had passed to what may be 
called its third stage — the stage of exposition and 
defense. First, there was the work of Jesus, whose 
teaching was entirely oral. This extended to A.D. 
30. Then followed the work of the apostles, who 
also depended almost wholly on oral teaching, and 
whose theme was, especially, the life, teachings, 
and resurrection of Christ. During this time the 
pastoral epistles were produced, of which it is prob- 
able not all have been preserved. During the lives 
of the apostles, tradition, as we have seen from the 
quotation from Irenseus, also placed the origin of 
the four Gospels, reckoning that the first produced 
was that by Matthew, and the last that of John. 

Now the writings of the fathers, to whom we have 
referred, abundantly indicate that the two stages of 
the development of Christianity referred to had 
passed. There was, in the middle of the second 
century, a Christian Church, holding the doctrines 
of the Church of to-day, and holding the same 
Scriptures which the Church now holds. 

In view of these facts, so evident in the writings 
of the fathers, there is no reasonable conclusion 
but that Scriptures, so extensively known and ac- 
cepted in their time, as from Jesus' immediate dis- 
ciples, were written in a previous generation and 
within the apostolic period. Another fact, which 
we ought to remember, is, that the histories con- 



The Records and the Writers. 109 

tained in the writings of the evangelists intro- 
duced nothing new into the faith of the Church. 
It is certain that the Church was well established 
before these histories appeared, and that when 
they appeared they had to be tested by those who 
had been orally taught, by the apostles of Christ 
and their disciples, the very things which the Gos- 
pels contained. The Gospels were not written 
for the purpose of establishing a movement, but 
are histories, of the most simple character, of a 
movement which was already widespread. 

According to ecclesiastical history, the apostle 
John died at Ephesus in the third year of the reign 
of the Emperor Trajan, i. e., A.D. 100. We have 
seen that Irenaeus, about A.D. 180, wrote of all four 
of the Gospels, and gave the opinion which was 
then held of their origin. We have seen also that, 
as early as A.D. 125, Aristides wrote his defense of 
Christianity, giving such an outline of its doctrines 
as the Gospels contain, and suggesting to the Em- 
peror Hadrian that he read the records in which 
these things were taught. We should also here 
mention the writings of Justin Martyr, who pre- 
sented his Apology for Christianity to the Emperor 
Antonine, about A.D. 148, and soon after published 
his dialogue with Tryphon, and about 165 wrote 
a second Apology, which he presented to Aurelius 
and the Roman Senate. From the writings of this 
father might be gathered almost every fact men- 
tioned in the four Gospels concerning the life and 
work of Christ. There has also been discovered, in 



no Foundations of Faith. 

the last quarter of a century, the Diatessaron of Ta- 
tian, which is compiled of the four Gospels. Ta- 
tian was a disciple of Justin Martyr, and composed 
this work in the latter part of the second century. 

Thus the manner in which the Gospels are re- 
ferred to, from the middle of the second century, 
makes it certain that their origin was considerably 
earlier than that time. It leaves, indeed, no rea- 
sonable doubt that the tradition of the early 
Church respecting the origin of these writings was 
correct. 

We must not close this chapter without re- 
ferring to a testimony, found in the first three 
Gospels, giving indubitable evidence of their early 
production. It is the prophecy of Jesus concern- 
ing the destruction of Jerusalem, which all three 
of these Gospels contain. The prophecy is graph- 
ic, and in no sense ambiguous. 

After Jesus had spoken of the overthrow of the 
temple, his disciples, still connecting in their 
thoughts the fall of the Jewish State with the end 
of the age, and the second coming of their Lord, 
asked, 'Tell us, when shall these things be? and 
what shall be the sign of thy coming? and of the 
end of the world?" Three questions are here 
asked, which Jesus severally answered. We quote 
only that regarding the overthrow of Jerusalem. 
The description is substantially the same in all 
three of the Gospels, and we quote from all three in 
this general statement of it. 

"When ye therefore shall see Jerusalem com- 



rhe Records and the Writers. in 

massed with armies, and the abomination of des- 
olation stand in the holy place, then let them 
which be in Judea flee unto the mountains, and 
let him which is in the midst of it depart out. 
Let him that is on the housetop not go down 
into the house, neither enter therein to take any- 
thing out of his house. Neither let him that is 
in the field turn back again for to take up his gar- 
ment, for these are the days of vengeance. And 
woe unto them that are with child, and to them 
that give suck in those days! for there shall be 
great distress in the land, and wrath upon this peo- 
ple; and they shall fall by the edge of the sword, 
and shall be led captive into all nations. There 
shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the 
beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever 
shall be, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of 
the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles be ful- 
filled. This generation shall not pass away until 
all these things be done." 

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees; fill ye up 
the measures of your fathers. Behold, I send unto 
you prophets and wise men and scribes; and some 
of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them 
ye shall scourge in your synagogues, and persecute 
them from city to city. All these things shall come 
upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 
thou that killest the prophets and stonest them 
which are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gath- 
ereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would 



112 Foundations of Faith. 

not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate; 
for I say unto you, ye shall not see me from hence- 
forth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in 
the name of the Lord." 

"When he was come near, he beheld the city and 
wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even 
thou, at least in this thy day, the things which 
belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, 
that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, 
and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every 
side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and 
thy children within thee; and they shall not leave 
in thee one stone upon another, because thou 
knewest not the time of thy visitation." 1 

We must refer our readers to the history of Jo- 
sephus, a commander of the Jews during the siege 
of Jerusalem, for testimony of the full and fearful 
fulfillment of these prophecies. Such horrors of 
war, famine, and pestilence, as assailed the doomed 
city, were never equaled in the history of the hu- 
man race. The streets were full of dead bodies. 
Famine led parents to eat their own children. Pes- 
tilence filled the houses with dead. Eleven hun- 
dred thousand Jews perished in the city in five 
months. When the city was taken and the temple 
burned, ten thousand dead lay around the founda- 
tions of the holy house, and six thousand more 
were consumed in its flames. 

1 For these prophecies, see Matt. xxiv. ; Mark xiii. ; Luke xxi. ; 
Matt, xxiii. 29-39; Luke xix. 41-44. 



The Records and the Writers. 113 

It is also recorded that no Christians perished 
in the siege of Jerusalem. They believed Jesus' 
word, and fled from the city at the approach of the 
Roman army, as he had commanded. All these 
things came to pass thirty-seven years after Jesus' 
crucifixion. 

It is impossible to believe that such prophecies 
as Matthew, Mark, and Luke record were forged 
after the events occurred. When Jews and Gen- 
tiles were earnest to suppress the Christian move- 
ment, such a forgery could not have escaped de- 
tection. 

In conclusion, we ask, Why should there be any 
controversy or doubt upon this subject? There 
are no other records so ancient as these Scriptures 
which are so extensively quoted, so often referred 
to, or in regard to which there was a more perfect 
consensus of opinion from a date so near their 
origin. If, in view of the testimony before us, we 
doubt the authenticity of the four Gospels, we 
shall be compelled, even the more, to doubt the au- 
thenticity of the Greek and Roman classics. It 
must be remembered that we are dealing with a 
question in regard to which hundreds of opposers 
of Christianity have persistently striven to raise 
doubts. They have exhausted every theory and 
subterfuge. If they require us to prove, with ab- 
solute certainty, the authorship of the writings of 
the New Testament, they require what cannot be 
done in regard to the most valued books of ancient 
8 



114 Foundations of Faith. 

history. But we can say confidently that the testi- 
mony given leaves no place for reasonable doubt. 

A system of criticism which would set aside be- 
liefs and opinions, no matter how venerable, or by 
whom held, and would characterize all historic ref- 
erences as tradition, and seek to exalt above all 
these what it is pleased to denominate the scien- 
tific method of historic criticism, in truth proposes 
to construct history according to its own predi- 
lection. 

As respects all the New Testament Scriptures 
following the Gospels, their value and their claim 
are in the faithfulness with which they represent 
the spirit and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. That 
they proceeded from men who believed in Jesus as 
the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and 
who were called to be his ministers, none can 
question. The consistency of their testimony, the 
self-denial of their lives, the love which they re- 
vealed for men, the offering of themselves fully on 
the altar of their devotion, furnishes evidence 
never challenged, that they were Jesus' true disci- 
ples, and that the wonderful Man of Nazareth was 
the source of that movement which these devoted 
ones spread wide in their day, and which has come 
down to us as the gospel of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER XL 
The Claims and Methods of the Prophets. 

In the word prophet, the prefix pro has refer- 
ence to place rather than to time. The prophet 
spoke for, or instead of, another. The idea of 
prediction was not, necessarily, involved in the 
functions of the Hebrew "Nabi" — prophet; nor is 
foretelling necessarily implied in our English word 
"prophesy." To prophesy may be only to teach 
or expound divine truth. Among the Hebrews a 
prophet, in the highest sense, was a man, God-ap- 
pointed and God-directed. When true to his mis- 
sion, he was an ambassador of Jehovah, declaring 
Jehovah's will to the people. Thus, Moses was a 
prophet of the highest order, and most like to that 
perfect revealer of the divine will — the Christ — 
to whom he referred when he said to Israel (Deut. 
xviii. 15): "The Lord thy God will raise up unto 
thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy 
brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken. ,, 
And so Peter interpreted it on the day of Pente- 
cost. (Acts iii. 22.) 

Samuel was a prophet, only less than Moses, in 
fixing the authority of Jehovah in the faith and 
institutions of the Hebrew people. Coming for- 
ward in a time of exceeding corruption, involving 
the priests no less than the people, Samuel recog- 
nized two especial needs: the first, a better admin- 

("5) 



n6 Foundations of Faith. 

istration of the laws of Moses; the second, a better 
system of teaching and expounding the religious 
system which Moses had given. Therefore, while 
he went forth from Ramah to hold yearly courts 
at Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpeh, he also established 
the school of the prophets, an institution which 
proved a great power in the religious life of the 
nation through all its after history. 

The priests, secure in official position, occupied 
about sacrifices and rituals, and having their sup* 
port provided by the tithes and offerings, were 
peculiarly liable to condone public vices, and to 
represent allegiance to Jehovah as consisting in 
ceremonial observances. But the prophets had no 
provision for their support. They were not the 
patrons of any class of people. Their business was 
to seek direct communion with God, and to grasp 
the spiritual import of his revelations and provi- 
dences. The prophets, therefore, are never teach- 
ing the people about rituals, and often break in 
upon a merely formal religion with the strongest 
denunciations. "Bring no more vain oblations; in- 
cense is an abomination unto me; the new moons 
and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot 
away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meet- 
ing/' (Isa. i. 13.) 

While the prophets, directly called and inspired 
of God, were superior, in the conscience of the 
people, to king or priest, and always rose above 
every form of servility, asserting the very authority 
of the Most High, yet the great majority who 



Claims and Methods of the Prophets. 117 

composed the schools — the sons of the prophets — 
were but teachers of divine truth in a secondary- 
grade. They studied the prophecies of their mas- 
ters and the words of the great revealers of divine 
truth who had gone before them. They were sed- 
ulous students of the law and of the past history 
of their people. The sacred oracles were taught 
orally in their schools, and the treasures of divine 
revelation cherished. If there were any written 
prophecies from the time the schools were founded 
by Samuel until the time of Jonah, more than a 
hundred and fifty years later, they have not come 
down to us. But both before and after Jonah the 
schools of the prophets were the repositories of di- 
vine revelation, whether oral or written. 

As respects the spirit of prophecy, two facts are 
always made prominent. The first is, the prophets 
were conscious of a divine call to the prophetic 
office; and the second is, that they were also as- 
sured of the objective source and reality of that 
which they declared to be the word of God. 

The prophet never chooses for himself the pro- 
phetic vocation. It is ever the mandate of Jehovah 
— the? overwhelming constraint of the Divine 
Spirit — which assigns him to this service. Human 
nature ever shrinks from the searching light of 
God's holiness, and the utter self-renunciation re- 
quired of the man who yields himself an instrument 
to God's will. This is a psychological fact with 
which the accounts which the prophets give of 
their call accord. Amos says: "I was no prophet, 



n8 Foundations of Faith. 

neither was I a prophet's son; but I was a herdman, 
and a gatherer of sycamore fruit: and the Lord 
took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said 
unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel." 
(Amos vii. 14, 15.) In the sixth chapter of Isaiah 
we have an account of the call of that prophet. 
First, there comes upon him a vision of the inef- 
fable glory and holiness of the Lord of hosts, at 
which vision he is overwhelmed with the sense of 
his own corruption, and made to cry out, "Woe is 
me! for I am undone; because I am a man of un- 
clean lips/' Then came to him a seraph with a 
burning coal from the altar and touched his lips. 
Thus was symbolized his deliverance, by the Spirit 
of God, from all carnal motives and human fear, 
and self-will, that he might fully and faithfully 
speak the word of God. Jeremiah, feeling the call 
to prophesy, as the imperative will of Jehovah, an- 
swers: "Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for 
I am a child." But he says: "The Lord said unto 
me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all 
that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command 
thee thou shalt speak." 

The prophet had his message from the Lord. It 
was not born simply of his faith and zeal. It was 
not a conclusion of his own reason. To deal with 
the prophetic messages as if they rose from such 
a source would be to discredit the claims of the 
prophets beforehand, and degrade the prophets 
themselves to the characters of enthusiasts or de- 
ceivers. 



Claims and Methods of the Prophets. 119 

The forms of speech which the prophets employ 
to introduce their deliverances are intended to rep- 
resent them as coming from the Lord. It is the 
word of the Lord by the mouth of his prophet. 
Zechariah says of the people: "They made their 
hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear 
the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts 
hath sent in his Spirit by the former prophets." 
(Zech. vii. 12.) Amos prophesies because con- 
strained by a divine power — a power too great 
to be resisted, as when a shepherd hath met a 
lion. "The lion hath roared, who will not fear? 
The Lord God hath spoken, who can but proph- 
esy?'' (Amos iii. 8.) Often is this constraining 
divine influence upon the prophets represented un- 
der the figure of the hand of the Lord. "I sat not 
in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I 
sat alone because of thy hand: for thou hast filled 
me with indignation." (Jeremiah xv. 17.) "The 
word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the 
priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chal- 
deans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the 
Lord was there upon him." (Ezekiel i. 3.) 

The prophet's messages might turn king and 
people to be his enemies. They might be rejected, 
and bring upon him who uttered them reproach 
and suffering; but the constraining Spirit of God 
drove him forward. Witness this strong passage 
from Jeremiah xx. 7-9: "O Lord, thou hast de- 
ceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger 
than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, 



120 Foundations of Faith. 

every one mocketh me. For since I spake, I cried 
out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of 
the Lord was made a reproach unto me, and a de- 
rision, daily. Then I said, I will not make mention 
of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his 
word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in 
my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I 
could not stay." The word "deceived" here means 
enticed or allured, and it probably refers back to 
the prophet's call as related in chapter i., where 
Jeremiah pleads, "I am a child," and the Lord bids 
him go as he is sent, and speak as he is commanded. 
In the confidence of divine guidance he went forth, 
but manifold disappointments and increasing dan- 
gers made him feel, almost, that he was mistaken 
and he would fain have surrendered a commission 
so burdensome. 

From the examples adduced, which are in har- 
mony with the general tone of the prophecies, we 
would say, the mental state of the prophet may be 
generally regarded as one in which he knows him- 
self to be under divine influence, and, to a certain 
extent, passive, as an instrument in God's hands. 

Respecting the manner in which the divine rev- 
elations were conveyed to the prophet's mind, the 
process was generally, if not always, objective. 
Visions were common, presenting in symbols the 
truths to be communicated. In these visions exist- 
ing conditions were often set forth with promises or 
threatenings for the future. Ezekiel saw in the val- 
ley of dry bones the dejected and apparently hope- 



Claims and Methods of the Prophets. 121 

less state of his people as they were in his day, and 
in the vivifying of these dead the promise of their 
restoration to the divine favor. He saw also, in 
his vision of the pollutions of the temple, a pano- 
rama of all the iniquities for which the judgments 
of God were ready to burst upon Judah. The se- 
quel of the vision is the terrible words of the Lord: 
'Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall 
not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they 
cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not 
hear them/' (Ezekiel viii. 18.) The vision was 
the usual form of revelation. Even where no state- 
ment is made of such manifestation, the language 
often implies it. One cannot miss this thought in 
reading Nahum's prophecy concerning the de- 
struction of Nineveh, or Isaiah's description of the 
invasion of Sennacherib, or Jeremiah's description 
of the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadrezzar. In- 
deed, almost all the prophetic utterances concern- 
ing future events are in a form which suggests a 
vision. Moreover, the designation of these utter- 
ances as "the vision" which the prophet saw, and 
the common designation of the prophet himself as 
the seer, not only assure us that the vision was the 
common form of revelation, but leave us in doubt 
whether it was not the only medium of direct di- 
vine manifestations. In the case of Moses, it is 
represented that his guidance and instruction were 
from miraculous interpositions. The burning 
bush, the plagues of Egypt, the pillar of cloud, the 
dividing of the sea, the terrors of Sinai, were not 



122 Foundations of Faith. 

visions, but the manifestations of Jehovah in ob- 
jective realities. Therefore, it is said of Moses that 
"there arose not a prophet since in Israel "like unto 
Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." 

Accepting the idea that revelations were made 
to the prophets who came after Moses, generally, 
if not uniformly, by visions, we obtain important 
suggestions regarding the interpretation of proph- 
ecy. The vision gives only an outline. It im- 
presses upon the mind of the prophet a truth re- 
garding the mind of God toward the people, or a 
future event, without fixing the time of its occur- 
rence, save as that may sometimes be suggested 
by concurrent circumstances also revealed. The 
visions of the prophets foreshadowed great events, 
vaguely, and oftentimes the prophet, who saw the 
vision and related it, but half understood its mean- 
ing. A general idea of what was symbolized was 
received and taught. Without this, he who saw 
the vision would have been no prophet. Pharaoh 
had visions foreshadowing the distress that should 
come upon Egypt, and Belshazzar saw visions 
which gave warning of impending judgments: but 
neither Pharaoh nor Belshazzar were able to in- 
terpret the visions for themeslves. They were not 
prophets. Joseph for the one and Daniel for the 
other must explain the objective manifestations, 
and read the handwriting of God in his symbols of 
truth. 

From the foregoing it appears that we must ex- 
pect to find in prophecy the spiritual interpreta- 



Claims and Methods of the Profhets. 123 

tion of the law and the history of Israel, and, for 
the future, an outline of the course of religious 
development, as the purposes of God unfold. And 
where especial providences are revealed, as in the 
judgments which were denounced upon Zion and 
her enemies, we must look only for general out- 
lines, sufficiently definite to notify the generation 
to whom they were delivered of the impending 
changes, and of their general character and pur- 
pose, yet sufficiently full to be recognized in their 
historic fulfillment by those who should see them 
accomplished. 

The prophets never claim continuous inspiration. 
The coming upon them of the inspiring spirit is 
distinctly recognized. Sometimes they sought rev- 
elations and waited for them, as, witness the ac- 
count given us in the forty-second chapter of Jere- 
miah, where the people come to inquire of the 
prophet, and he says: "I have heard you; behold, 
I will pray unto the Lord your God according to 
your words; and it shall come to pass, that what- 
soever thing the Lord shall answer you, I will de- 
clare it to you. . . . And it came to pass after ten 
days, that the word of the Lord came unto Jere- 
miah." But it is to be noted that the tone of the 
prophet is always in harmony with the thought of 
revelation from God. The prophet does not argue, 
he commands; he does not reason, he declares. 
He will not withhold the message which God gives 
him, but will declare it at any cost. The claim of 
being under direct influence of the Divine Spirit 



124 Foundations of Faith. 

could not be more strongly or constantly asserted 
by the prophets, neither could it be more consist- 
ently maintained in the character of their utter- 
ances. 

The prophets speak, not their own words, but 
the word of the Lord; and in that word their own 
feelings as men, and prejudices as Jews, are lost. 
They speak not out of their own hearts or minds. 
There comes upon them an influence from without, 
an influence from beyond. They are caught in the 
stream of divine purpose, they speak of man in his 
relation to God. They interpret the past in cor- 
rect relation to God's purposes. They see the fu- 
ture as God reveals it. Such were the prophets of 
Israel, who dared introduce their deliverances with 
"Thus saith the Lord." 



CHAPTER XIL 
The Testimony of Prophecy. 

We have seen that the prophets claimed to be 
God's messengers, receiving from him the word 
which they delivered. We proceed to inquire, es- 
pecially, concerning the evidences by which such 
a claim can be supported; and here we accept the 
task of proving that the prophets, both in their 
character and their utterances, transcended the 
natural motives and the natural knowledge of men, 
and that the history which has intervened since 
their day constantly witnesses to them as agents 
who truly foretold the advancing purposes of God. 
The fulfillment of specific prophecies is less impor- 
tant in this connection, and will be noticed here- 
after. What we beg to adduce here, as the highest 
evidence that the prophets were inspired, is the 
general scheme of prophecy, and the spirit of the 
prophets. 

In respect to the scheme of prophecy we shall 
consider its lofty spiritual tone, its interpretation 
of the covenant, the law, the theocracy, and Is- 
rael's national history, its revelation of Christ, and 
emergence into the new dispensation. 

The prophets, as men en rapport with the divine 
mind, deal with man's moral nature as it is re- 
lated to God. Statutes and ordinances, rituals and 
ceremonies, the teacking of the letter of the law, 
may all fall short of God's requirements. Samuel's 

(" 5 ) 



126 Foundations of Faith. 

words to Saul may be taken as announcing the gen- 
eral programme of prophecy in regard to its teach- 
ing of personal religion. "Hath the Lord as great 
delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obey- 
ing the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is bet- 
ter than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of 
rams." That this is the general tone of prophetic 
teaching scarcely needs to be argued. We adduce 
a few passages in further illustration. "For I de- 
sired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge 
of God more than burnt offerings." (Hosea vi. 6.) 
"Cast away from you all your transgressions, 
whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new 
heart and a new spirit : for why will ye die, O house 
of Israel?" (Ezekiel xviii. 31.) "To what pur- 
pose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? 
saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of 
rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not 
in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he 
goats. When ye come to appear before me, who 
hath required this at your hand, to tread my 
courts?" (Isaiah i. 11, 12.) "To what purpose 
cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the 
sweet cane from a far country? your burnt offerings 
are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto 
me." (Jeremiah vi. 20.) 

Though true religion is of the heart, it is not in 
emotion or meditation, but in deeds of love to men; 
for God is the Father of all, and our service reaches 
not to him, but to our fellow-men, of whose rights 
he is jealous and in whose happiness he delights. 



The Testimony of Prophecy. 127 

''Wash you and make you clean, put away the evil 
of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do 
evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the 
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the 
widow." (Isa. i. 16, 17.) 

Ezekiel, who was himself a priest, sometimes en- 
joins ceremonial services, but in the character of a 
good man, as drawn in the eighteenth chapter of 
his prophecy, he only speaks of justice, mercy, 
purity, righteousness, charity, the fear of God, and 
freedom from idolatry, as distinguishing virtues. 
"If a man be just, and do that which is lawful and 
right, and hath not eaten upon the mountains, nei- 
ther hath lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house 
of Israel, neither hath defiled his neighbor's wife, 
neither hath come near to a menstruous woman, 
and hath not oppressed any, but hath restored to 
the debtor his pledge, hath spoiled none by vio- 
lence, hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath 
covered the naked with a: garment; he that hath 
not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any 
increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from in- 
iquity, hath executed true judgment between man 
and man, hath walked in my statutes, and kept my 
judgments, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely 
live, saith the Lord God." (Ezek. xviii. 5-9.) 

Surely in such utterances as these we have the 
highest and best conception of the true worship 
of God to be found in any literature, or in the re- 
ligious teachings of any nation. It does not avail 
to answer such a fact by saying the Hebrew peo- 



128 Foundations of Faith. 

pie had an especial genius for religion. Teaching, 
which we are compelled to accept as the full decla- 
ration of essential truth, so far as relates to man's 
individual service of God, we must own to be the 
will of God, and the genius to perceive and declare 
it can only be thought of as an induement of di- 
vine wisdom. Truth is divine, by whomsoever 
spoken. It carries in its appeal to human reason 
and conscience its own witness of divine authority, 
since it is impossible that we should believe of any 
moral teaching that it is right, yet not the will of 
the moral Governor of the world. In general civ- 
ilization, the Hebrews were far inferior to some 
other nations of their day. If, then, the world 
must accept these teachings of the prophets, in 
the sphere of personal duty and spiritual thought, 
as the best for all time, such a fact would seem 
sufficient to authorize that form of utterance which 
these prophets adopted when they introduced their 
deliverances with, "Thus saith the Lord God." 

In respect to the covenant made with Abraham, 
its terms implied a purpose embracing the whole 
human race. It contained the distinct statement, 
"In thee shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed." (Gen. xii. 3.) 

But that he might preserve revealed truth from 
corruption and loss, and prepare through genera- 
tions a treasure house of divine knowledge both 
in his revelations and the history of his providences, 
the Lord gave to his people institutions and laws 
which shut them off, severely, from other people. 



The Testimony of Prophecy. 129 

It was but natural that the Hebrews, at large, re- 
garded these peculiarities of their polity as mark- 
ing them as the especially chosen of Jehovah, and 
upon this ground developed, according to the tend- 
ency of carnal nature, pride, self-righteousness, 
and intolerance. They thought of other nations 
as subjects of God's wrath rather than of any 
schemes of mercy. They had no plans for the sal- 
vation of other people. When their own national 
peace in life seemed to be threatened by their 
neighbors, it was time to say, "Let God arise; let 
his enemies be scattered." 

But the prophets always had a clear view of the 
universality of God's plans for the salvation of 
men. In his vision of the blessings to be brought 
to the world under the reign of the Anointed 
One, David says: "His name shall endure forever; 
his name shall be continued as long as the sun: 
and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall 
call him blessed." (Ps. lxxii. 17.) The same 
truth is declared by Isaiah: "And in that day 
there shall be a root of Jesse which shall stand 
for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gen- 
tiles seek; and his rest shall be glorious." (Isa. 
xi. 10.) The glory of Zion restored shall be the 
joy of the Gentiles. "And the Gentiles shall come 
to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy 
rising." (Isa. lx. 3.) "For from the rising of the 
sun even unto the going down of the same, my 
name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in 
every place incense shall be offered unto my name, 
9 



130 Foundations of Faith. 

and a pure offering: for my name shall be great 
among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts." 
(Mali. 11.) 

Respecting the theocracy, the whole history con- 
tained in the book of Judges tells us how low the 
common conception of it was, and what a miserable 
failure it proved to be under such a view. 

Moses was a prophet of God, teaching men the 
nature of the true God, their moral relations to 
him, and the duties which he required of them. He 
was not altogether nor chiefly an original teacher 
in this sphere. There had been many who walked 
according to the laws of God ages before the great 
Hebrew lawgiver. The Ten Commandments did 
not reveal new obligations nor call to the perform- 
ance of duties unrecognized and unobserved before. 
But the thing, especially, which Moses was called 
to do, was to lay down the basis for a national 
polity. During the patriarchal times, the author- 
ity of a father in covenant relation with God and 
guided of him would secure, without the machinery 
of statutes and ordinances and official administra- 
tions, all that was practicable in authority, wisely 
guided, for holding the tribe in the way of right 
faith and conduct. But when Israel came out of 
Egypt, the first obvious need was organization of 
government, on a broader basis, and according to 
a national and not a tribal scheme. The twelve 
tribes were to be bound in one after a plan of gov- 
ernment which would be sufficient for the needs of 
a growing nation. But the ideal of the patriarchs 



The Testimony of Prophecy. 131 

rather the divine ideal which the patriarchs 
had accepted, for Moses claimed that the ideal 
was of God — was still to be maintained. The law 
of God therefore — the Ten Commandments — was 
first laid down as the basis of the government to be 
established, the Magna Charta for the guidance of 
the people. Upon this basis the statutes were es- 
tablished, to carry the morality of the Ten Com- 
mandments into effect in civil administrations. 
The aim was a civil government founded solely 
on the will of God; nothing less, in short, than 
God ruling over men — men owning no duty but 
such as was revealed in God's law. 

This was the ideal of the theocracy — a form of 
government entirely unique in comparison with all 
other nations of the earth, and that which made 
Israel, especially, the peculiar people of God — pe- 
culiar in the revelations which they had received, 
and the duties which they had accepted; and thus 
in the history of the world clearly marked as the 
people of special providence, and appointed to the 
special purpose of establishing the reign of Jehovah 
over all men. 

It is probable that Moses himself did not see 
how far away the realization of such an ideal must 
be. He took no steps toward organizing and per- 
petuating an administrative machinery. While he 
stood as God to the people, the nation had a theo- 
cratic head and administrator, so far as lay in the 
power of a God-appointed and God-directed man. 
But Jethro, the ruler of Midian, Moses's father-in- 



IJ2 Foundations of Faith. 

law, quickly saw that some better provision for 
administering the law must be made. Even the 
law of God proclaimed by Moses could not be 
made effective without machinery to administer it. 
Hence he led Moses to appoint the seventy judges. 
After Moses this system of judges, without a ruling 
head, representing the divine will, gave place to 
tribal strifes and a state of lawlessness in which, 
according to the Scripture record, every man did 
"what was right in his own eyes." The people 
were helpless before their enemies, save that, from 
time to time, God did interpose, and speak to his 
people, and make bare his arm to defend them, so 
as to assert still his covenant relation and provi- 
dential purpose respecting them. A dark period of 
history is this of the judges, but nowhere in Is- 
rael's history are there more manifest interposi- 
tions of the divine hand, answering wonderfully 
the claim of the people to have no ruler but God. 
'The time would fail to tell of Gideon, and Barak, 
and Deborah and Samson, and Jephtha, who out 
of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in 
fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." 

But the ideal was too lofty. It could not be 
attained even under a divinely guided leader like 
Gideon or Deborah. It assumed men as subjects de- 
livered from carnal motives and worldly ambitions, 
with God's law written upon their hearts. Israel 
was far from attaining this. The ideal of the the- 
ocracy was impractical. When Samuel, with states- 
manlike wisdom, began a movement to redeem his 



The Testimony of Prophecy. 133 

people from a state of anarchy, by the establish- 
ment of courts of justice for the enforcing of the 
law, the movement, must needs go further, though 
Samuel is reluctant to accept the issue. For 
national government, for unity, and the steady ad- 
ministration of law, Israel must have a king. Yet 
it seemed to the prophet Samuel to be the abandon- 
ing of a divine plan, a thing against which he pro- 
tested, but was directed of God to grant the peo- 
ple their will. 

But the ideal of theocracy was not abandoned 
by the prophets. To their thought this appar- 
ent failure threw light on the future. They would 
not interpret any dispensation of providence as 
being without a spiritual lesson. The theoc- 
racy was fundamental in the conceptions of the 
great lawgiver, Moses; it was fundamental in 
the faith of Israel. The accomplishment of God's 
plan and promise demanded it; but the thought of 
attaining it when the law of the divine kingdom 
was not written in men's hearts had brought the 
darkest period in the Hebrew history. But to the 
prophets the divine kingdom, the universal reign 
of Israel's king, remained an enchanting vision, de- 
veloped beyond all the strifes of this world and 
spreading its glory over all mankind. But the 
awful nature of sin with which God's plans had to 
struggle was becoming more manifest. "The law 
entered that the offense might abound, and that 
sin by the law might appear exceeding sinful." 
The covenant with Israel, and through Israel with 



134 Foundations of Faith. 

the world, could not fail. It represented the pur- 
pose of the Maker and Ruler of the world. Human 
hope might outrun the consummation, but the di- 
vine ideal should be attained. It was the fore- 
gone decree of the Almighty, and the star of hope 
for all men. But the order then existing had to 
pass away. The religion of rituals or of an out- 
ward law could not secure true allegiance to Je- 
hovah. It could not be attained under the exist- 
ing polity. Therefore, the prophets proclaimed 
the fall of the Jewish state, yet predicted the tri- 
umph and universal reign of the Lord's Anointed. 
But their vision reached to a spiritual kingdom. 

It was manifest that "the law made nothing 
perfect." "Righteousness was not of the law." 
Something more than knowledge of God and truth 
is needed to make men righteous. Nor could sac- 
rifices avail. "It was impossible for the blood of 
bulls and goats to take away sin." These truths, 
declared by Paul, in after time, were seen and con- 
fessed by the prophets under the old dispensation. 

A new dispensation the prophets saw to be nec- 
essary. It would seem that Moses himself saw the 
incompleteness of the system which he established, 
and understood that it adumbrated a higher reve- 
lation. When the law was given at Sinai, Moses 
representedthe Lord as saying, "Oh that there were 
such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and 
keep all my commandments always, that it might 
be well with them, and with their children forever!" 
(Deut. v. 29.) 



The Testimony of Prophecy. 135 

Moses also suggested the failure of the theo- 
cratic scheme, and that the lack of heart loyalty 
to Jehovah might lead the people to desire a king. 
(Deut. xvii. 14, 15.) And, depicting all the evil 
which should come upon them for disobedience, 
he mentions with other distresses that they should 
be carried away into captivity with their king, thus 
assuming the fact of a king in the future. 

All the afflictions and scourgings against which 
the people were warned in the law were prefaced 
with an "if." They were to result upon condition 
that Israel di'd not remain true to the covenant. 
But in later years, viewing the iniquity of the peo*- 
ple, and the constant trend of national affairs to- 
ward deeper corruption, the prophets no longer 
speak with an "if," but proclaim the overthrow of 
the state, the dispersion of the people, and the 
breaking up of the Jewish polity as inevitable — a 
doom from which there was no escape. This, how- 
ever, was not to be thought of as a failure of the 
divine plan indicated in the covenant with Abra- 
ham. To bring blessing to all the world through 
him and his seed was still the purpose of Jehovah. 
The existing order was temporary, and preparatory 
of the true theocracy, and the extending of the 
covenant blessing to all mankind. 

Daniel saw that the kingdom which should be 
set up above all human dominion was yet in the 
future; that it should be established by a power 
to man visible, and should abide forever. Human 
powers were represented by the many-metaled 



136 Foundations of Faith. 

image of a man. The divine kingdom was pro- 
jected upon the world by an invisible force. This 
kingdom should overwhelm human powers and 
agencies and institutions, leveling all high things, 
exalting lowly things, and asserting the equality 
and common rights of all men. This triumph of 
the divine kingdom was not the extension of Jewish 
temporal dominion, for he foretells the destruction 
of the city and sanctuary, and that the sacrifice and 
oblation shall cease. (Dan. ix. 26, 27.) 

Isaiah, in his prophecy of the Anointed One, 
who should come forth to rule the world, and to 
whom the Gentiles should be gathered, represents 
not the perpetuation of David's royal authority, 
but that which comes of the especial anointing 
of God. Jesse, the old farmer of Bethlehem, and 
not David, is mentioned as the ancestor of this 
righteous branch. His succession as related to 
David should be one of divine choice and anointing 
as David's was. (Isa. xi.) 

There are prophecies which, if they stood alone, 
would be taken to declare the perpetuity and un- 
broken succession of dominion in the lineal de- 
scendants of David. "I have made a covenant 
with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my 
servant, Thy seed will I establish forever, and build 
up thy throne to all generations. " (Ps. lxxxix. 

3,40 

This covenant is recorded in 2 Samuel vii. 11-13, 
'where it is said of David's son Solomon, "I will 
stablish the throne of his kingdom forever"; a 



The Testimony of Prophecy. 137 

promise which we find recorded again in I Chron- 
icles xvii. 11-14, where it is said, "I will settle him 
in mine house and in my kingdom forever: and his 
throne shall be established for evermore." 

There was to be, of David's line, One who should 
be "a priest forever, after the order of Melchize- 
dek" — L e., a priest directly anointed of God, and 
holding his priestly office not by any hereditary 
claim, without father or mother as pertaining to the 
priesthood. (Psa. ex. 4.) But it is very manifest 
that the eternal dominion of David's line, and the 
universality of the kingdom which David should 
attain, were spiritualized in the interpretations of 
the prophets, and removed from all worldly power. 
As an earthly power, David's kingdom should fail. 
Hosea describes a long period which should come 
in Israel's history when they should have no na- 
tionality, and no order of priesthood, nor sacrifices, 
yet should be without a taint of idolatrous cor- 
ruption, for they should also be without an image, 
and without a teraphim; never going after an- 
other God, but like a woman betrothed waiting the 
fulfillment of the covenant of espousal. The state 
of Israel at this very day is vividly pictured. "And 
I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days ; 
thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not 
be for another man: so will I also be for thee. For 
the children of Israel shall abide many days with- 
out a king, and without a prince, and without a 
sacrifice, and without an image, and without an 
ephod, and without a teraphim: afterwards shall the 



138 Foundations of Faith. 

children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their 
God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord 
and his goodness in the latter days." (Hosea iii. 
3-5.) The spiritual sense of this prophecy is fully 
accepted in the Targum of Jonathan, which thus 
paraphrases it: "Afterwards the children of Israel 
shall repent, and shall inquire for the worship of 
Jehovah their God, and shall obey Messiah, the 
Son of David their king, and shall come in troops 
to the worship of Jehovah, and great shall be their 
happiness at the end of days." The same vision of 
the sore sifting and trial of Israel, their long deso- 
lation and affliction, appeared to Amos, and their 
after restoration is thus declared: "In that day wilL 
I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, 
close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up 
his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: 
that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and 
of all the heathen, which are called by my name, 
saith the Lord that doeth this." (Amos ix. 1 1, 12.) 
These words were written in the time of Israel's, 
greatest prosperity, during the reign of Jeroboam 
II. The long affliction which should come to Israel, 
their captivity among the Gentiles, and their ulti- 
mate gathering — the Gentiles with them — can only 
be interpreted of a kingdom far other than the 
earthly rule of any descendant of David. 

The scope of this work limits us to these sketch- 
es, which indicate the spiritual trend of the proph- 
ecies as respects their interpretation of the cov- 
enant and the theocracy. 



The Testimony of Prophecy. 139 

The prophets saw in the covenant a purpose 
fixed, and from which no temporal powers and no 
earthly changes could turn the divine hand. As 
respected its benefits, it ever had two aspects; one 
related to those benefits which were inherent in 
providential conditions, and which in no way de- 
pended upon personal choice or action. The He- 
brew could not attribute to personal merit the 
fact that his nation was especially favored with the 
revelations of divine truth. Just as the man who 
has been under Christian light to-day can claim no 
personal merit that he was not born in a Hotten- 
tot's tent. A plan for giving the knowledge of the 
true God to the whole world was involved in God's 
scheme of human history, and was not dependent 
upon the moral merit of men or nations. 

This increase of light might bring increased af- 
fliction instead of increased happiness and pros- 
perity. It is here that the element of human 
agency came in and the justice of God to reward 
every man according to his works. This fact, that 
the Hebrews were to be held to more rigorous ac- 
count than other nations, Amos declares: "Hear 
this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, 

children of Israel, against the whole family which 

1 brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You 
only have I known of all the famiies of the earth; 
therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. " 
(Amos iii. 1, 2.) 

We have results conditioned on human will and 
action so far as God's favor toward individuals or 



140 Foandatio7is of Faith. 

nations is concerned, but above and beyond all this 
we have the foregone purpose of Jehovah to give 
divine light, with all its offered privileges, to all 
men through the seed of Abraham. Moreover, as 
respects God's favor to individuals, there was al- 
ways hope. For Jehovah's covenant was not like 
a compact between equals. Men enter into cov- 
enant, and if one is unfaithful, the covenant is 
broken, is dissolved, and its conditions withdrawn. 
But God's covenant of grace is like his covenant 
in nature. The conditions of blessing remain, 
though one may by disregarding them fall into 
affliction. If the laws of nature are violated, one 
suffers; but the laws remain, inviting him to correct 
his conduct and turn to the way of safety. Or we 
may compare God's covenant with the covenant of 
a father with his child. Prompted only by a de- 
sire for the child's good, the provision for good, the 
readiness to do good, remain while the child is 
prodigal and disobedient. There is always invi- 
tation to return, there is always a call to repent- 
ance. A father receives joyfully a returning child, 
and God receives a repenting sinner. Thus in its 
twofold plan, that of enlightening the nations, and 
that of continually offering blessing to all men, Je- 
hovah's covenant was immutable and everlasting. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
The Doom of Israel's Foes. 

All the utterances of the Hebrew prophets are 
to be considered under two heads, those which re- 
fer to their own people, and those which refer to 
the enemies of their nation and religion; but in 
each they pass beyond merely temporal views; what 
they see is Jehovah warring for his cause, to vin- 
dicate his claims in the eyes of all nations; and the 
end of all is to be the extension of his sway over 
the whole world in righteousness and blessing. Na- 
tions and cities have significance in this struggle 
chiefly for the principles which they represent. 

The course of Providence, indicated, is ever the 
defeat and utter overthrow of all which opposes the 
purpose of Jehovah — his revelations of truth and 
his scheme of salvation, as embraced in the cov- 
enant; while, on the other hand, the covenant peo- 
ple, as his children, are subject to chastisement 
and instruction for their purification and advance- 
ment. To transcribe all the specific prophecies of 
the Bible, and note their fulfillment in history 
would, alone, require a volume much larger than 
this. A mere glance at the two classes of proph- 
ecies mentioned will, we think, be sufficient. 

In the beginning of Hebrew history, Ishmael, 
the son of Abraham, was cut off from covenant rela- 
tion to God, for the Lord said to Abraham, "In 

(mO 



142 Foundations of Faith. 

Isaac shall thy seed be called/' From Ishmael and 
Isaac two races descended whose history and char- 
acteristics lie far apart. The first preserved, with 
wonderful fidelity, the external character and man- 
ners of the patriarch, his nomadic life, his dwelling 
in tents, his costume and habits and patriarchal 
rule. The descendants of the other, taught in the 
religion of Jehovah, sent to school in Egypt, and 
forced to till the fields and build the treasure cities 
of the Pharaohs, then drilled to the camp and 
the march, the experiences of war, and the sole 
command of a leader, and, above all, impressed with 
faith in the special guidance of God, were prepared 
to plant a national civilization, dominated by their 
religion, in the land of promise. The distinction 
between the Bedouin of the desert and the Jew 
stands as a testimony of the special providence 
which guided the covenant people. But for spe- 
cial guiding and schooling, the descendants of 
Isaac would have been as the descendants of Ish- 
mael. 

The prophecy concerning Ishmael is exceedingly 
striking: "And he will be a wild man; his hand 
will be against every man, and every man's hand 
against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of 
all his brethren." (Gen. xvi. 12.) "I will make 
him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; 
twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him 
a great nation." (Gen. xvii. 20.) Nearly four thou- 
sand years ago was this prophecy uttered, and, in 
every period from that to the present time, it has 



The Doom of Israel's Foes. 143 

been perfectly suited to the descendants of Ish- 
mael. 4 The Arab of to-day/' says Bishop Foster, 
"answers to the portrait drawn nearly four thou- 
sand years ago. Ishmael, equally with Isaac, is a 
permanent memorial of the inspiration of the 
prophetic overshadowing. It is impossible to ex- 
plain the facts on any other theory. Warred upon 
by all the nations of antiquity, they have still 
retained their independence; surrounded by the 
impact of other races, they have perpetually re- 
sisted alliance and interfusion; the blood of Ish- 
mael still flows unadulterated in their veins; their 
home is still the tent. Free as the winds which 
sweep their coasts, they still roam the desert in- 
habited by their ancestors, the terror of strangers 
and the insoluble enigma of civilization. The very 
name, Arab, suggests everything in the prophecy." 

Nineveh was the first of the ancient cities to 
fall under the judgments pronounced by Jehovah's 
prophets. When these maledictions were uttered 
Nineveh was the greatest city of the world, the 
capital of the Assyrian empire. It was described 
by historians as being at least forty-eight, probably 
sixty, miles in circuit, with walls a hundred feet 
high, and thick enough for three chariots to drive 
abreast on the top, and on the walls were fifteen 
hundred towers, each two hundred feet high. 

Such was Nineveh when the prophet Nahum 
proclaimed her doom, nearly a hundred years be- 
fore she fell. He sets forth in the preface to his 
prophecy both the righteousness and the patience 



144 Foundations of Faith. 

of Jehovah. But his purposes toward Nineveh have 
an end. "The burden of Nineveh. The book of 
the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. God is jealous, 
and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and 
is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his ad- 
versaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. 
The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and 
will not at all acquit the wicked: the Lord hath 
his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the 
clouds are the dust of his feet." (Nahum i. 1-3.) 
'The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trou- 
ble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. But 
with an overrunning flood will he make an utter 
end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pur- 
sue his enemies. What do ye imagine against the 
Lord? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not 
rise up the second time." (Nahum i. 7-9.) In har- 
mony with this prophecy, Nineveh went down at a 
stroke, and revived no more. The end was "with 
an overrunning flood." Diodorus Siculus, a Ro- 
man historian of the time of Julius and Augustus 
Caesar, tells the story of Nineveh's fall; and this 
account, from this heathen source, is found to be 
in perfect accord with Nahum' s prophecy. The 
Medes under Cyaxares and the Babylonians un- 
der Nabopolassar, B.C. 625, besieged Nineveh. 
Siculus says that Sardanapalus, the king of As- 
syria, after the complete discomfiture of his army, 
confided in an old prophecy that Nineveh could 
not be taken unless the river should become the 
enemy of the city; that after an ineffectual siege 



The Doom of Israel *s Foes. 145 

of two years by the combined army of the Medes 
and Babylonians, the river, swollen with long- 
continued and tempestuous torrents, inundated 
the city, and threw down the wall for a space 
of twenty furlongs; and the king, deeming the 
prediction accomplished, despaired of his safety 
and erected an immense funeral pile, on which 
he heaped his wealth, and with which himself, 
his household and palace were consumed. Be- 
sides the passage quoted from Nahum, that proph- 
et refers again to this destruction by a flood in 
chapter ii., verse 6, "The gates of the rivers shall 
be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved"; and 
in verse 8, "Nineveh is of old like a pool of wa- 
ter; yet they shall flee away. Stand, stand, shall 
they cry; but none shall look back." Diodorus 
Siculus says: "The king of Assyria, elated with his 
former victories and ignorant of the revolt of the 
Bactrians, had abandoned himself to scandalous in- 
action; had appointed a time of festivity, and sup- 
plied his soldiers with abundance of wine; and the 
general of the enemy, apprised by deserters of their 
negligence and drunkenness, attacked the Assyrian 
army while the whole of them were fearlessly giv- 
ing way to indulgence, destroyed a great part of 
them and drove the rest into the city." Such is 
history. The prophet had said, "While they be 
folden together as thorns, and while they are drunk- 
en as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble 
fully dry." (Nahum i. 10.) 

Nineveh was to have no future. She should not 
10 



146 Foundations of Faith. 

rise from her first ruin/ 'The Lord will stretch 
out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; 
and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like 
a wilderness. How is she become a desolation, a 
place for beasts to lie down in!" (Zeph. ii. 13, 15.) 
So complete was the destruction of Nineveh that 
its site was for ages lost. In the second century 
Lucian, who was a native of a city on the banks 
of the Euphrates, testified that Nineveh was ut- 
terly perished, that there was no vestige of it re- 
maining, and that none could tell where it was 
situated. But for thirteen centuries past it has 
been believed that the site of Nineveh has been 
fairly determined. Gibbon so understood, when he 
described the battle which decided the fate of 
Chosroes. "The Romans/' he says, "boldly ad- 
vanced from the Araxes to the Tigris, and the 
timid prudence of Rhazates was content to follow 
them by forced marches through a desolate coun- 
try, till he received a peremptory mandate to risk 
the fate of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of 
the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the 
great Nineveh had formerly been erected; the city, 
and even the ruins of the city, had long since dis- 
appeared; the vacant space afforded a spacious 
field for the operations of two armies." Late re- 
searches have established the fact that the field 
here described was the place where siood great 
Nineveh. The explorations of Layard, Rawlinson, 
Hincks, Rassan, Botta, Bonomi, and others, have 
removed all doubt. The ancient city of Nineveh is 



The Doom of Israel's Foes. 147 

buried under the debris of centuries on the bank of 
the Tigris near Mosul. The towers of Khorsibad, 
Karamles, Nimroud, and Nebbi-Yunus, which re- 
quire a circle of sixty miles to inclose them, are 
remains of ancient Nineveh. The village of Nebbi- 
Yunus stands over the ancient palace of Sennach- 
erib. For two thousand five hundred years the site 
of the great city was lost. Alexander marched his 
army over it, and Xenophon his ten thousand, and 
ancient historians, Strabo and Diodorus Siculus 
and Ptolemy, traversed the plain, and hundreds of 
travelers later, and learned nothing of the ruins so 
deeply buried beneath their feet. But in our own 
time temples and palaces are being brought to 
light, sculptures and pictures and libraries ex- 
humed, and the museums of the world are receiv- 
ing rich treasures from long-buried Nineveh. On 
the clay tablets of Nineveh are found records of the 
kings of Israel and Judah, Ahaz and Jehu, Heze- 
kiah and Manasseh. The latter reigned after the 
prophet Nahum had ended his career, and almost 
to the time when his prophecy of the fall of Nin- 
eveh was fulfilled. 

Ezekiel, in chapters xvi., xvii., xviii., describes 
the glory and the downfall of Tyre. He saw her de- 
struction, by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, near at 
hand. The city was taken after thirteen years' 
siege — but the conqueror grasped an empty shell, 
for the riches of Tyre were transported to an is- 
land near by, where the great queen of commerce 
rose in splendor; but other and more successful 



148 Foundations of Faith. 

spoilers were seen in the distance. Alexander 
afterwards used all the material of the old city, 
which he threw into the sea to make a causeway 
to the new, which he captured and burned accord- 
ing to the prophecy of Zechariah, ix. 3, 4. "Tyrus 
did build herself a stronghold, and heaped up silver 
as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets. 
Behold, the Lord will cast her out, and he will 
smite her power in the sea; and she shall be de- 
voured with fire." Even after its destruction by 
Alexander, the city of Tyre, within a few years, rose 
to considerable importance. It was taken by An- 
tigonus after fourteen months' siege. It afterwards 
fell successively under the control of Syria, Egypt, 
the Romans, the Saracens, the Crusaders, until it 
was utterly destroyed by the Mamelukes, A.D. 
1289. A coast of bare rocks and barren sands, 
with a few fishermen's huts, now mark the place 
of ancient Tyre. 

The whole view of her future and her desolation, 
as at present, seems to have appeared in the vision 
of Ezekiel. 'The word of the Lord came unto me 
saying, Son of man, because that Tyrus hath said 
against Jerusalem, Aha, she is broken that was the 
gates of the people; she is turned unto me; I shall 
be replenished, now she is laid waste: therefore 
thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against 
thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come 
up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to 
come up. And they shall destroy the walls of 
Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also 



The Doom of Israel' s Foes. 149 

scrape her dust from her, and make her like the 
top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spread- 
ing of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have 
spoken it, saith the Lord God; and it shall become 
a spoil to the nations." (Ezekiel xxvi. 1-5.) 

The accounts which ancient historians have left 
us of Egypt bring before us a vision more splen- 
did than the dreams of romance. The time of 
Menes is fixed at 4,700 years before Christ. His 
tomb has been discovered in our time and the story 
of his reign verified. For more than four thousand 
years one of the highest types of ancient civiliza- 
tion flourished in the valley of the Nile. The 
whole valley is to-day a treasure house of won- 
ders. It is estimated that more than seven hun- 
dred million mummies are buried here — kings with 
their royal jewels, and tablets telling of their deeds, 
the rich, with costly vessels and ornaments, which 
reveal to what height art had attained. The ruins 
of temples, the obelisks, and rock-hewn tombs, the 
colossal statues, the pyramids, the inscriptions, 
which abound in this now desolate land, assure us 
that the story of her fruitfulness and wealth, her 
learning and art, and her thousand cities, was no 
fiction. Egypt was in her splendor in the days of 
Isaiah and Ezekiel, and had recorded more than 
three thousand years of prosperous history. But 
Isaiah and Ezekiel proclaimed her doom. Inva- 
sion and conquest were possible, but what these 
prophets foretold seemed most incredible — the fall 
of all greatness in the valley of the Nile, and steril- 



150 Foundations of Faith. 

ity and death where life and luxury so long had 
reigned. Pharaoh is likened to the cedar of Leb- 
anon, and these are some of his descriptions as 
given in the thirty-first chapter of Ezekiel: "Son 
of man, speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to 
his multitude, Whom art thou like in thy great- 
ness? The waters made him great, the deep set 
him on high with her rivers running round about 
his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all 
the trees of the field, and his boughs were multi- 
plied, and his branches became long because of the 
multitude of waters, when he shot forth. Thus 
was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his 
branches: for his root was by great waters. I have 
driven him out for his wickedness. Thou shalt lie 
in the midst of them that be slain by the sword. 
This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the 
Lord God." 

Isaiah prophesied (chapter xix. 5-7): "The waters 
shall fail from the sea, and the rivers shall be wasted 
and dried up. And they shall turn the rivers far 
away; and the brooks of defense shall be emptied 
and dried up; the reeds and flags shall wither. The 
paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the 
brooks, and everything sown by the brooks, shall 
wither, be driven away, and be no more." 

Ages of oppression which have discouraged in- 
dustry and degraded the people, and the ever-en- 
croaching sands of the desert, have made Egypt 
for the most part poor and destitute. The ancient 
streams of the Nile, the irrigation canals, ceased 



The Doom of Israel's Foes. 151 

ages ago. The desert has buried many a realm 
once fruitful. The Egypt that was can never ap- 
pear again. The land itself is smitten, and turned 
to a desolation. Keith says: "Over the greater 
part of Egypt desolation has done its perfect work. 
The streams of the Nile are now circumscribed 
within narrow limits to what they formerly were. 
On the western side of Egypt, as seen in Heath's 
plan of Egypt, an ancient bed of the river Nile 
now dry, and called by the natives Bellomah, is 
distant eighty miles from the nearest branch of 
that river. The intermediate space, of greater 
length than breadth, is marked as immense sandy 
plains, and a long canal which partly intersected 
it is now dry, except at the time of inundation. 
Along the seacoast the land is level and destitute 
of trees; and on the eastern side of Egypt the 
Pelusian branch of the Nile is choked up, and the 
plain in which it flowed, except in a few stagnant 
pools, is undistinguished from the sandy desert 
which now surrounds it on every side. In the in- 
termediate space, and even within the far narrow- 
er limits now occupied by the stream of the Nile, 
the dry lines of rivers and canals are to be seen, and 
the desert covers many extensive regions which 
once raised Egypt among the chief of the king- 
doms. With the exception of the environs of Ro- 
setta and Damietta, and a few miserable villages, in 
traversing the once rich Delta of Egypt from one 
side to another, the traveler passes through a des- 
ert." 



152 Foundations of Faith. 

The ruins of Egypt's ancient cities seem to have 
the prophecy of Ezekiel written upon them: "Thus 
saith the Lord God, I will also destroy the idols, 
and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph 
(Memphis); and I will make Pathros (Southern 
Egypt) desolate, and will set fire in Zoan (Tanis), 
and I will execute judgment in No (Thebes); and 
will pour my fury upon Sin (Pelusium), the 
strength of Egypt; and I will cut off the multitude 
of No. And I will set fire in Egypt : Sin shall have 
great pain, and Noph shall have distresses daily. 
The young men of Aven (Heliopolis) and of Pi- 
beseth shall fall by the sword: and these cities shall 
go into captivity. At Tehaphnehes also the day 
shall be darkened, when I shall break there the 
yokes of Egypt; and the pomp of her strength shall 
cease in her. Thus will I execute judgments in 
Egypt; and they shall know that I am the Lord." 
(Ezekiel xxx. 13-19.) 

Respecting the rule over Egypt, the prophets 
indicate that it will continue under the hand of 
strangers. "I wall make the land waste, and all 
that is therein, by the hand of strangers." (Ezekiel 
xxx. 12.) "There shall be no more a prince of the 
land of Egypt." (Ezekiel xxx. 13.) "It shall be 
the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt 
itself any more above the nations." (Ezekiel xxix. 

150 

Egypt became entirely subject to the Persians 
three hundred and fifty years before Christ. It 
was afterwards subdued by the Macedonians and 



The Doom of Israel's Foes. 153 

governed by the Ptolemies for the space of two 
hundred and ninety-four years, when it became a 
province of the Roman empire B.C. 30. In A.D. 
641 it fell under control of the Saracens. In 1250 
the Mamelukes deposed their rulers and seized the 
authority of Egypt. "A mode of government the 
most singular and surprising that ever existed on 
earth was established and maintained. Each suc- 
cessive ruler was raised to supreme authority from 
being a stranger and a slave. No son of a former 
ruler, and no native of Egypt, could succeed to the 
sovereignty; but a chief chosen from a new race 
of imported slaves. When Egypt became tributary 
to the Turks in 15 17, the Mamelukes retained much 
of their power, and every pasha was an oppressor 
and a stranger. During all these ages every effort 
to emancipate the country or to create a prince of 
the land of Egypt has proved abortive, and has 
been fatal to the aspirant." Thus the prophecy 
concerning Egypt, most singular in character both 
as to the country and its government, has had a 
most striking and singular fulfillment. Ancient 
Egypt is to us to-day a romantic dream, a cease- 
less wonder. Its ruins fully attest the story of its 
mighty past. To the stranger who comes to view 
her desolation, the Nile murmurs a sad requiem of 
the splendor that has faded: 

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, 
Like some grave, mighty th©ught threading a dream; 
And times and things, as in that vision, seem 

Keeping along it their eternal stands, — 



154 Foundations of Faith. 

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands 

That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme 

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, 
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.. 

Then comes a mighty silence, stern and strong, 

As of a world left empty of its throng, 
The oppressive void weighs on us, and we wake, 

And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along 
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take 
Our own calm journey on for human sake. 

More than any other city, Babylon represented 
to the mind of the Hebrew prophet the sum of 
iniquity, in its apostasy from the earliest revela- 
tions of divine truth, its sensuality and pride, and 
its oppression of the nations. Babylon is always 
reckoned the most wonderful city ever built by 
man, the highest expression of human pride and 
power. The vast plain of Chaldea, by which the 
city was sustained, was, for thousands of years, the 
garden of the world, unsurpassed by Egypt. In- 
deed, it is now understood that the wonderful 
civilization which sprang up on the banks of the 
Nile was introduced by Menes from the valley be- 
tween the Euphrates and Tigris. On a parallel 
with the prophecy concerning Egypt, but still more 
wonderful, is that which foretold the fall of Babylon 
and the desolation of all Babylonia. It was full 
one hundred and sixty years before Babylon re- 
ceived the first blow to her power that Isaiah pro- 
claimed her doom. 

That first blow was dealt by Cyrus, who is now 
proved, by tablets lately discovered in Babylon 
itself, to have been first the king of Elam, the 



The Doom of Israel's Foes. 155 

mountainous country separating Persia from 
Babylonia. He afterwards obtained dominion over 
Persia and Libya. It is worthy of note that Isaiah, 
chapter xxi. 2, only speaks of the Elamites and 
Medes as taking the city of Babylon. The story 
of the siege of Babylon, and the entrance of Cyrus's 
army by the bed of the Euphrates after the water 
had been turned into a canal, is now in measure 
discredited. There has been discovered the record 
which Cyrus caused to be made of the taking of 
the city. No description of the manner of its 
capture is given, save the statement that Gobryas, 
one of his generals, entered the city without fight- 
ing, on the sixteenth day of the month Tammuz. 
This confirms the story told in the book of Daniel, 
of Belshazzar's feast, and the taking of the city on 
that night when the court was given up to wild 
festivity; for the feast of Tammuz was, with the 
Babylonians, the greatest bacchanalian revel of the 
year. "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to 
Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue 
nations before him; and I will loose the loins of 
kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and 
the gates shall not be shut." (Isa. xlv. 1.) 'The 
mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight, 
they have remained in their holds: their might hath 
failed; they became as women." (Jer. li. 30.) 

This mention of the name of Cyrus the con- 
queror is one of the most remarkable circum- 
stances in prophetic writings. Also the gates were 
opened before Cyrus's army as history records, and 



156 Foundations of Faith. 

his soldiers entered the city, and even the palace 
inclosure, without resistance. Another fact, which 
lately discovered Babylonian tablets reveal, is that 
Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, and reigned 
conjointly with him. He was slain at the gate of 
the palace on this feast night, as related in the book 
of Daniel. 

The city of Babylon and all Babylonia sank into 
ruin slowly through a succession of centuries. As 
respected the final desolation of Babylon, Isaiah 
drew this picture: "Babylon, the glory of king- 
doms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall 
be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 
It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt 
in from generation to generation; neither shall 
the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the 
shepherds make their fold there. But the wild 
beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses 
shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall 
dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the 
wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their des- 
olate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; 
and her time is near to come, and her days shall 
not be prolonged." (Isa. xiii. 19-22.) 

There could be no more perfect picture of the 
ruins of Babylon as they are to-day, and as they 
have been for many centuries, than this language 
of the prophet. Dens of hyenas and jackals 
abound, owls and bats occupy the cavities of the 
ruins, scorpions and serpents abound; the Arab 
deems the place haunted by evil spirits, and will 



The Doom of Israel's Foes. 157 

not spread his tent within its precincts. "Because 
of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be inhabited, 
but it shall be wholly desolate." (Jer. 1. 13.) 
Keppel, speaking of his visit to Babylon, says : 'The 
eye wandered over a barren desert, in which the 
ruins were nearly the only indication that it had 
ever been inhabited." "Cut off the sower from 
Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in time 
of harvest." (Jer. 1. 16.) "On this part of the 
plain, both where traces of buildings were left and 
where none had stood, all seemed equally naked 
of vegetation." (Porter's Travels, vol. ii., page 
302.) "I will make thee a burnt mountain." (Jer. 
Ii. 25.) "Birs Nimroud presents the appearance of 
a circular hill. It is strewn over with petrified and 
vitrified substances. On the summit are immense 
fragments of brickwork, of no determinate figure, 
tumbled together and converted into solid vitrified 



masses." 



Upon the whole land of Chaldea the prophets 
denounced barrenness and desolation. The pre- 
dictions to this effect are many and full, and they 
furnish a complete description of that once fruitful 
realm as it is to-day. "And the land shall tremble 
and sorrow: for every purpose of the Lord shall 
be performed against Babylon, to make the land 
of Babylon a desolation without an inhabitant." 
(Jer. Ii. 29.) Sir R. K. Porter, in his travels, says 
of the country around Babylon: "The abundance 
of the country had vanished as clean away as if 
the besom of destruction had swept it from north 



158 Foundations of Faith. 

to south; the whole land, from the outskirts of 
Babylon to the farthest stretch of sight, lying a 
melancholy waste. Not a habitable spot appears 
for countless miles." 

When these cities stood in their glory and 
strength, the prophecies which doomed them were 
uttered. The circumstances which should attend 
their fall passed in panoramic vision before the 
prophet's mind. Their after desolations through 
the slow-passing centuries were seen. The graphic 
portrayal of all this, the prophet drew from vision 
in which the fate of cities and empires was boldly 
outlined. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
The Chastisements of God's People. 

From the standpoint of patriotism, it is not 
strange that the Hebrew prophets should have 
denounced judgments upon those nations and cities 
which they judged their foes. From the stand- 
point of religious faith and zeal, it is not strange 
that they declared that idolatry and false religions 
should fall before the revelations of their Jehovah 
God, and that the only true God should at last 
reduce the world under his sway. But patriotism 
could never have predicted the overthrow of the 
Jewish state, the holy city, the temple, the sol- 
emn Mosaic rituals, and the rejection, as a na- 
tion, of God's covenant people. And if religious 
faith prompted such utterances, triumphing over 
all human motives, and moving the prophets in 
their religious zeal to hold steadily in view the 
progress, not of temporal powers but of spiritual 
forces, not the perpetuation of outward forms but 
the divine reign in human hearts, then this same 
religious faith and zeal must appear to us an in- 
spiration from God. Its utterances must be con- 
fessed to be true in spirit and aim to a divine pur- 
pose, which the prophets clearly saw and by which 
they were controlled. 

But from whatever motives the prophecies may 
have proceeded, the fact of their fulfillment is the 

(i59) 



160 Foundations of Faith. 

prophet's vindication when he claims inspiration, 
saying, "Thus saith the Lord God." When 
prophecy turns out to be forewritten history, it 
can neither be regarded as representing human 
prescience nor the impulses of human passion or 
pride. When it is found that the Hebrew prophets, 
who committed themselves so positively and un- 
reservedly over a field as broad as the then peopled 
world, and for a time reaching through millenniums 
of years, yet spake the truth, their visions can only 
be regarded as the revelations of the Omniscient. 

Paul represents that the common people among 
the Jews were dazzled by the glory of the Mosaic 
dispensation, and could not grasp fully the truth 
that it should pass away. This obscuration of the 
new dispensation glory was symbolized in the veil 
spread over Moses's face. It was this spiritual 
glory which Moses foresaw that lighted his face, 
because he steadfastly looked to the end of the 
very things which he was then establishing, but 
the people were not ready for that vision. Yet, 
had they been able to look steadfastly on the glory 
of the first dispensation, they would have antici- 
pated the second. "Seeing then that we have 
such hope," says Paul, "we use great plainness of 
speech; and not as Moses, who put a veil over his 
face, that the children of Israel could not stead- 
fastly look to the end of that which is abolished: 
but their minds were blinded; for until this day re- 
maineth the same veil untaken away in the reading 



The Chastisements of God's People. 161 

of the old testament; which veil is taken away in 
Christ." (2 Cor. iii. 12-14.) 

But Moses saw the coming glory, and saw as 
clearly, and foretold, the night which should close 
the dispensation which he opened. 

While the hosts of Israel stood in sight of the 
promised land, Moses, in his last instruction and 
charge, set forth the close of their national his- 
tory, depicting with historical clearness and terri- 
ble fidelity events which, at that time, tarried be- 
hind the procession of fifteen hundred years. It 
was not by Egypt or Assyria or Babylon that Israel 
should fall, but by a power which had not yet risen 
upon the horizon of history, and which should 
arise in a land as yet unknown. The character- 
istics of the Roman people are strikingly portrayed. 
"The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from 
far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle 
flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not un- 
derstand; a nation of fierce countenance, which 
shall not regard the person of the old, nor show 
favor to the young: and he shall eat the fruit 
of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou 
be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee ei- 
ther corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, 
or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee. 
And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy 
high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou 
trustedst, throughout all thy land." (Deut. xxviii. 

49-52.) 

For a brief summary of facts in the fulfillment 
11 



162 Foundations of Faith. 

of this prophecy, we quote from Dr. Alexander 
Keith: "Each particular in this prophecy, though 
it be only introductory to others, has met its full 
completion. The remote situation of the Romans, 
the rapidity of their march, the very emblems of 
their arms, their unknown language and warlike 
appearance, the indiscriminate cruelty, and un- 
sparing pillage which they exercised toward the 
persons and property of the Jews, could scarcely 
have been presented in more descriptive terms. 
Vespasian, Adriah, and Julius Severus removed 
with part of their armies from Britain to Palestine, 
the extreme points of the Roman world. The 
eagle was the standard of their armies, and the 
utmost activity and expedition were displayed in 
the reduction of Judea. They were a nation of 
fierce countenance, a race distinct from the effem- 
inate Asiatic troops. At Gadara and Gamala, 
throughout many parts of the Roman empire, and 
in repeated instances at Jerusalem itself, the 
slaughter of the Jews was indiscriminate without 
distinction of age or sex. Through all the land of 
Judea every city was besieged and taken, and their 
high and fenced walls raised to their foundations." 
Moses draws a picture of horrors which were 
fully realized in the siege of Jerusalem, when 
famine had rooted out natural affection and sup- 
planted even parental tenderness with fierceness 
and despair. For it is true, as Josephus relates, 
that women even ate their own children in that 
awful crisis. "And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine 



The Chastisements of God } s People. 163 

own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daugh- 
ters, ... in the siege, and in the straitness, where- 
with thine enemies shall distress thee: so that the 
man that is tender among you, and very delicate, 
his eyes shall be evil toward his brother, and toward 
the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of 
his children which he shall leave: so that he will not 
give to any of them of the flesh of his children 
whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left 
him in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith 
thine enemies shall distress thee in thy gates. The 
tender and delicate woman among you, which 
would not adventure to set the sole of her foot 
upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, 
her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her 
bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daugh- 
ter, and toward her young one, . . . and toward 
her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat 
them for want of all things secretly in the siege 
and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress 
thee within thy gates. " (Deut. xxviii. 53-57.) 

The prophecy of Jesus of Nazareth in regard 
to the overthrow of Jerusalem we have already no- 
ticed in chapter x., in connection with our argu- 
ment for the production of the Gospels in apostolic 
times. If these utterances attributed to Jesus were 
before the events which Josephus records in his 
history of the siege of Jerusalem, their fullness and 
force as divine revelations are most manifest. 
While we think the proof that these predictions 
were uttered by Jesus, as the evangelists assert, is 



164 Foundations of Faith. 

quite sufficient, there is a consideration to reen- 
force this argument in the prophecies of our Lord 
concerning the after history of the Jewish people, 
and the experiences which his own followers should 
encounter. As respects the Jews, he said: "And 
they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall 
be led away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem 
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the 
times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." (Luke xxi. 24.) 
Of similar import is Jesus' lamentation over Je- 
rusalem: "Behold, your house is left unto you 
desolate. For I say unto you, ye shall not see me 
henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that com- 
eth in the name of the Lord." (Matt, xxiii. 38, 
39.) The treading down of Jerusalem and the 
wide, long wandering of her children, as seen to- 
day, are in fulfillment of these words uttered, as none 
dispute, near two thousand years ago. Indeed, 
there is no more striking fulfillment of prophecy 
possible to be demanded than that which has been 
held before the world for more than eighteen cen- 
turies of Jewish history leading up to our time, 
and in the condition of the Jewish people to-day. 

In the prophecies concerning the afflictions of 
the Jews we must note not merely the faithful pic- 
ture which the prophets give of their fearful and 
prolonged judgments, but the promise also of de- 
liverance at last, as a thing which the covenant re- 
lation of Israel and the revealed purpose of God 
make sure. The "until" of Jesus' predictions is 
a prophecy of restoration — "until the time of the 



The Chastisements of God 's People. 165 

Gentiles be fulfilled," "until ye shall say, Blessed is 
he that cometh in the name of the Lord." We 
shall find this same "until" in all the woes which 
the prophets denounce upon Israel. 

The condition of the Jews after the overthrow 
of their state was graphically described by Moses 
— their wide dispersion, their prolonged affliction, 
and their reproach. Though his predictions of ca- 
lamity were fulfilled in every scourging which God 
visited upon them for their sins during their na- 
tional existence, there are pictures of distress only 
realized after the people were scattered over all 
the earth. "And it shall come to pass, that as the 
Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, and to 
multiply you; so the Lord will rejoice over you to 
destroy you, and to bring you to naught; and ye 
shall be plucked from off the land whither thou 
goest to possess it. And the Lord shall scatter thee 
among all people, from the one end of the earth 
even unto the other. . . . And among these na- 
tions shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole 
of thy foot have rest : but the Lord shall give thee 
there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sor- 
row of mind." (Deut. xxviii. 63-65.) "And yet for 
all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I 
will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, 
to destroy them utterly, and to break my cove- 
nant with them: for I am the Lord their God." 
(Lev. xxvi. 44). 

Eight hundred years after Moses, Jeremiah 
prophesied at length, and with much detail, the dis- 



i66 Foundations of Faith. 

persion of the Jews. Although the Babylonish 
captivity was even then begun, and much of Jere- 
miah's prophecy had reference to afflictions at 
hand, still there appears constantly a further 
reach in his visions, and conditions are constantly 
described which have been more completely ful- 
filled since the overthrow of Jerusalem and the 
Jewish state by the Romans. Indeed, what Jere- 
miah said in his own day was the beginning of the 
dispersion. The ten tribes were already gone into 
captivity from which they never returned, nor did 
all of Judah and Benjamin, or even the greater part 
of them, ever return from the captivity in Baby- 
lon. What Jeremiah saw was the dispersion, and 
the weary centuries of sorrow which lay before his 
people. "I will deliver them to be removed into 
all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a 
reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all 
places whither I shall drive them." (Jer. xxiv. 9.) 
''And I will persecute them with the sword, with 
the famine, and with the pestilence, and will de- 
liver them to be removed to all the kingdoms of 
the earth, to be a curse, and an astonishment, and 
a hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations 
whither I have driven them." (Jer. xxix. 18.) 

We might fill page upon page with such proph- 
ecies concerning the Jewish people, but those given 
indicate fairly their trend and tone. 

The idea of a spiritual seed, a faithful remnant in 
whom the purposes of God shall be revealed, is a 
thought always present with the prophets. "I will 



The Chastisements of God's Peofle. 167 

scatter toward every wind all that are about him 
to help him, and all his bands; and I will draw out 
the sword after them. And they shall know that I 
am the Lord, when I shall scatter them among the 
nations, and disperse them in the countries. But I 
will leave a few men of them from the sword, from 
the famine, and from the pestilence; that they may 
declare all their abominations among the heathen 
whither they come; and they shall know that I 
am the Lord." (Ezekiel xii. 14-16.) "Behold, the 
eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, 
and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; 
saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of 
Jacob, saith the Lord." (Amos ix. 8, 9.) "For 
I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee: 
though I make a full end of all nations whither I 
have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end 
of thee ; but will correct thee in measure, and will 
not leave thee altogether unpunished." (Jer. xxx. 
n.) Whether they contemplated storms near at 
hand, or storms which lowered through long cen- 
turies to come, the prophets still saw light beyond 
— the light of an approaching kingdom, the reign 
of heavenly glory. Thus in connection with his 
glowing prophecy concerning the Righteous 
Branch — the Rod out of the stem of Jesse — in that 
day when "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and 
the leopard lie down with the kid," the prophet de- 
clares the outcasts of Jacob shall be gathered under 
Messiah's reign. "And in that day there shall be a 
root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the 



168 Foundations of Faith. 

people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest 
shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that 
day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the sec- 
ond time to recover his people, who shall be left, 
from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, 
and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, 
and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. 
And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and 
shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather to- 
gether the dispersed of Judah from the four cor- 
ners of the earth." (Isa. xi. 10-12.) 

Jerusalem and Babylon were used by the proph- 
ets as symbols of good and evil — the cause of God 
and all which opposes his cause. Jerusalem, the 
capital city of God's chosen people, the center from 
which divine revelation was to go forth to the 
world, stood for God's purpose to save the world. 
Babylon, the first city to bring down upon the 
post-diluvians the judgments of heaven, from 
whose influence Abraham had gone out into a wil- 
derness to rescue his seed from apostasy; Babylon, 
proud, imperious, sensual, the constant menace of 
Israel, was the chosen objective representation of 
false religion and sin. The dispensations of Prov- 
idence toward these two cities cast the light of 
divine revelation through all the future. Jerusa- 
lem, scourged as no other city in the history of 
the world, is still preserved, and waits her deliver- 
ance under the covenant promise of God. Babylon 
is fallen forever, and made an eternal desolation. 
So shall God chastise and purify his Church, and 



The Chastisements of God's People. 169 

so shall she triumph at last. The consummation 
was revealed to John upon Patmos when he saw 
the New Jerusalem purged from all her stains, de- 
livered from all her foes, and heard the cry, "Bab- 
ylon the great is fallen, is fallen !" 

History has been faithful to such prophecy. The 
kingdom of heaven advances apace. The consum- 
mation may be far off. But none can doubt that 
righteousness and truth are strengthening their 
sway over the human mind, and that they will 
triumph at last. 



CHAPTER XV. 
Messianic Prophecies. 

Whether we receive the Bible as a revelation 
from God or not, we cannot deny that it teaches 
a religion, the general scheme of which is the sal- 
vation of our race. The account which it gives of 
creation is not for the purpose of history, save to 
introduce man upon the stage. It is man, in his 
relation to God, and God's purpose concerning 
man, which are always uppermost in the thoughts 
of the authors of the Bible, whether they write 
law or history, prophecy or precepts. 

Having presented man as the direct creation of 
the divine hand, the author of Genesis gives us at 
once the story of the fall, and, upon the basis of 
man's corrupted -nature and his estrangement from 
God, divine providence and purpose are repre- 
sented as conducting a scheme for his deliverance 
from evil powers, and the full establishment of di- 
vine law over his will and life. This consummation 
was, as we have shown, the ideal of the theocracy, 
which the prophets saw and foretold was not to be 
realized by any mere doctrines or sacraments, or 
any organizations of government, but by the as- 
cendency of spiritual truth over the minds of men 
and divine influence renewing their moral natures. 
They saw, also, that these two agencies, "grace 
and truth," must work together. For man, in the 

(170) 



Messianic Prophecies. 171 

attainment of holiness, cannot go beyond his con- 
ception of it. Therefore, they foretold that the 
old dispensation must give place to one of clearer 
light and larger spiritual power. This new era in 
the history of the race would be ushered in by the 
coming of the Lord's Anointed, whose dominion 
should be "everlasting," whom all nations should 
call "blessed," and whose laws should be written 
in the hearts of men. 

Having noticed that the general trend of proph- 
ecy is to such a goal, we ask to set before the read- 
er certain specific prophecies relating to the world's 
Redeemer. 

The first Messianic prophecy — as we believe is 
rightly claimed by Bible expositors — is in the doom 
which God is represented as pronouncing upon the 
serpent, at the time of man's first sin. The doom 
which was to come upon the tempter as the enemy 
of God and man is pronounced in Genesis iii. 15: 
"I will put enmity between thee and the woman, 
and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise 
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 

Whether we interpret the story of the garden, 
the trees, and the serpent allegorically or literally, 
it matters not, as the same general truths concern- 
ing the moral history and state of our race are set 
forth in either case, and the doom of the serpent 
can only mean triumph over evil, gained by the 
seed of the woman. It will not be an easy triumph. 
The serpent shall afflict with a temporary affliction 
the seed of the woman, but shall meet ultimate de- 



172 Foundations of Faith . 

struction. The bruising, respectively, of head and 
heel shall be the result of the enmity between the 
"woman's seed" and the seducer. 

That which strikes us most in this prophecy is 
the position assigned the woman as representative 
of the race. This is against all general usage, and 
against all Scripture usage elsewhere. This singu- 
lar form of statement seems designed to point out 
a singular genesis of the promised deliverer as be- 
ing preeminently the seed of the woman. 

The next prophecy bearing on our subject is in 
Genesis ix. 24-27: "And Noah awoke from his 
wine, and knew what his younger son had done 
unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a serv- 
ant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And 
he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and 
Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge 
Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; 
and Canaan shall be his servant." Canaan, Ham's 
son, is here representative of all the Hamitic races, 
and this prophecy of Noah foreshadowed the fu- 
ture of the three great branches of the human 
family which should descend from his three sons. 
To the descendants of Ham is decreed a menial 
place among the nations. To his brethren, the 
people of his own race, he should be the most de- 
graded drudge — "a servant of servants." To the 
Semitic and Japhetic races also he should be in 
bondage. It is not sound reason which justifies 
slavery on the ground of this prophecy, for then 
must we acquit men of responsibility in every evil 



Messianic Prophecies. 173 

thing which it was foretold they would do — the 
Canaanites, for the increasing sin which filled up 
their cup of guilt and led to their doom; the Jews, 
for the apostasy which sent them into captivity. 
Noah only saw and foretold, in general terms, the 
characteristics of the people who should rule the 
world in the future. 

It needs no space here to show how the children 
of Ham have been servants through the ages; nor 
need we detail the history of the wonderful en- 
largement of Japheth, from the Persians, through 
Greeks, Romans, Germans, Scandinavians, Rus- 
sians, French, Spaniards, Italians, English, and 
Americans, to that wide dominion which they now 
hold. They have long been the ruling people of 
the world, and their enlargement was never so 
rapid as to-day, in any previous age of the world's 
history. 

Shem was to teach religion. The Lord God — 
the Jehovah God — of Shem should be blessed by 
the world, and the descendants of Japheth should 
take their religion from the Semites; for this is 
the meaning of the phrase, "He shall dwell in the 
tents of Shem" — not as a conqueror, but as a pupil, 
coming to the tents of Shem to secure instruction. 
The symbol is of peace, and not of war. 

We pass to the covenant with Abraham (Gen. 
xii. 1-3). Here we have the distinct promise to 
the patriarch: "In thee shall all families of the 
earth be blessed." Here is the calling out of one 
chosen to be a conspicuous actor in a world-wide 



174 Foundations of Faith, 

scheme — a scheme of blessing. But it was not 
in his own character alone, or chiefly, that Abra- 
ham was to bless the world. The blessing should 
come through his descendants, for so was the 
promise: "In thy seed shall all the nations of the 
earth be blessed." (Gen. xxii. 18.) When he re- 
ceived this promise Abraham was old and childless. 
It is in striking proof of the special providence 
of Jehovah, guiding the after history of the Is- 
raelites, as they claimed that, although Abraham, 
after receiving this promise, became the father of 
eight sons — one of Hager, and six of Keturah, 
besides Isaac, of Sarah — the covenant line was 
through Isaac alone. There is no explanation to 
give for the wide departure from the patriarch's re- 
ligion on the part of the Ishmaelites and the sons of 
Keturah, as compared with the direct continuance 
and development of it through Isaac and his seed, 
but the direct care of Jehovah and special providen- 
tial direction. The promise passed from Abraham 
to Isaac: "I will perform the oath which I sware to 
Abraham thy father; and I will make thy seed to 
multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto 
thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall 
all the nations of the earth be blessed." (Gen. 
xxvi. 3, 4.) 

Isaac had two sons, but Jacob was chosen to 
stand in the covenant line; and we observe again 
the same clearly marked providence distinguishing 
between the descendants of Jacob and Esau which 



Messianic Prophecies. 175 

we noticed in the case of Isaac as compared with 
the other sons of Abraham. 

But although Jacob had twelve sons, none of 
them were cut off from the privileges of the cov- 
enant, and all their posterity were reckoned with 
the peculiar people of God; but there was again a 
prophetic utterance to mark the tribe of which the 
promised seed should come: "The scepter shall not 
depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between 
his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the 
gathering of the people be." (Gen. xlix. 10.) 

The claim that Shiloh here refers to the place 
where the ark rested first, after the Israelites en- 
tered Canaan, is not supported either by the gram- 
matical construction of the text or by the facts 
of history. As to the history, Judah had no ac- 
knowledged leadership during the time of the ex- 
odus, nor afterwards, until David, of the tribe of 
Judah, was anointed king. Even the first king of 
Israel — Saul — was a Benjamite. As to the gram- 
matical construction, "until Shiloh come" is the 
only rendering of the passage which is at all ad- 
missible. But as this is the only place where the 
title Shiloh is given to the promised Messiah, there 
has been some doubt whether the word here should 
be simply rendered "rest," which is its meaning, or 
taken as a concrete noun and so rendered "rest- 
giver." Gesenius, who first held the latter view, 
afterwards changed to the former, and so would 
translate the passage, "The scepter shall not de- 
part from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his 



176 Foundations of Faith. 

feet, until rest shall come, and the nations obey 
him" (Judah). This, however, does not change 
the Messianic reference of the text according to 
Gesenius, for this is his comment upon it: "Ju- 
dah shall not lay aside the scepter of a leader 
until he shall have subdued his enemies and ob- 
tained dominion over many nations; referring to 
the expected kingdom of Messiah, who was to 
spring from the tribe of Judah," "Others," he says, 
"whom I formerly followed, take 'Shiloh' here as 
a concrete, i. e., 'pacificator/ Trince of peace/ Un- 
derstanding either the Messiah or Solomon." 

The Hebrew lexicographer, Parkhurst, is very 
definite in his view of the passage. "The word," 
he says, "is a title of Messiah, as the three Chaldee 
Targums rightly explain it: that of Onkelos by 
'Messiah/ and those of Jerusalem and of Jonathan 
Ben-Uziel by 'the King Messiah/ " 

The passages referred to by Parkhurst will be 
more satisfactory to the reader when fully quoted; 
we therefore give them as follows: Targum of 
Onkelos, "Until Messiah come, whose is the king- 
dom"; Jerusalem Targum, "Until the time that 
the King Messiah shall come, whose is the king- 
dom." The Babylonian Talmud has: "What is the 
name of Messiah? His name is Shiloh, for it is 
written, Until Shiloh come." 

According to both Jewish and Christian interpre- 
tation, this passage from Genesis xlix. 10 points to 
the Redeemer, and foretells his birth of the tribe 
of Judah. It decrees to Judah supremacy among 



Messianic Prophecies. 177 

the tribes of Israel, down to the appearance of the 
great spiritual King, in whom should be fulfilled 
the covenant which promised blessing to all the 
world through the seed of Abraham. We may 
well pause a moment upon this prophecy to note 
how wonderful have been the circumstances of its 
fulfillment. It decreed to the tribe of Judah, as 
we have suggested, a national existence till the 
coming of Shiloh. 

It was full six hundred years after the death of 
Jacob when the tribes desired a king, and Samuel 
anointed Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, to rule the 
people. Thus it seemed, in the beginning, as if 
Jacob's prophecy would fall to the ground. Saul 
himself understood that dominion in Israel did 
not pertain to his tribe, for he said to Samuel: 
"Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the 
tribes of Israel, and my family the least of all the 
tribes of Benjamin? Wherefore, then, speakest 
thou so to me?" 

But it was soon revealed that dominion in Israel 
pertained not to Benjamin; for while Saul yet 
reigned, Samuel, by divine direction, anointed Da- 
vid, the son of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah, to be 
king. 

After the death of Solomon, ten tribes broke off, 
following Jeroboam, of the tribe of Ephraim, who 
with them established the northern kingdom, 
afterwards known as the kingdom of Israel. But 
Judah and Benjamin remained in allegiance to 
Jeroboam, Solomon's son. The tribe of Judah gave 
12 



178 Foundations of Faith. 

name to the southern kingdom of Judah, in dis- 
tinction from the kingdom of Israel. 

After two hundred and forty-five years the king- 
dom of Israel was conquered by Shalmaneser, and 
her people carried away into the kingdom of Media, 
from which dispersion they never returned, and are 
now referred to as "the lost tribes." Judah re- 
mained one. hundred and forty-two years later, 
when they were carried captive to Babylon. But 
the tribe of Judah did not then lose its autonomy. 
This can be more easily understood when it is re- 
membered that the laws of the Jews were all of a 
religious character, and their autonomy was pre- 
served in their religious observances. It was this 
bond of union, and this internal organization which 
furnished the ground of Hainan's fears, when he 
appealed to the king for the destruction of this 
peculiar people. His argument was: "There is a 
certain people scattered abroad and dispersed 
among the people in all the provinces of thy king- 
dom; and their laws are diverse from all people; 
neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it is 
not for the king's profit to suffer them." (Esther 
iii. 8.) 

The autonomy which held the Jews together was 
of such a nature that it could be dissolved only by 
their extermination, or very wide dispersion. To 
this fact we must also add, that Daniel, of the seed 
royal, was even a ruler in Babylon. "Then com- 
manded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with 
scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and 



Messianic Prophecies. 179 

made a proclamation concerning him, that he 
should be the third ruler in the kingdom." (Dan. 
v. 29.) 

After seventy years Judah returned to Jerusalem, 
while there yet remained among the people some 
who had been carried away in their youth. Judah 
remained a kingdom till the birth of Jesus of Naz- 
areth; for, under the Roman rule, the autonomy of 
the kingdom was continued, and Judea was ruled 
as a viceroyalty under Herod the Great. 

Thus Judah continued to have a name among 
the nations till Shiloh came — Jesus of Nazareth, 
the promised "Peace-giver." 

According to the general view of the covenant 
and the theocracy set forth by the prophets, Ju- 
dah's dominion should not cease at the coming of 
Shiloh, but only be consummated in that spiritual 
and universal dominion which the Lion of the tribe 
of Judah should attain. The people should be 
gathered to Shiloh — the King who should unite 
the world under his sway. In allusion to his name 
as "the Rest-giver," Isaiah afterwards said: "Unto 
him shall the Genties seek; and his rest shall be 
glorious." (Isa. xi. 10.) 

The next prophecy which we notice regarding 
the descent of Messiah points out the particular 
family to which he should belong. "And there shall 
come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a 
Branch shall grow out of his roots: and the Spirit 
of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wis- 
dom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and 



180 Foundations of Faith. 

might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the 
Lord; and shall make him of quick understanding 
in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge 
after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after 
the hearing of his ears: but with righteousness shall 
he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the 
meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth 
with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath 
of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And right- 
eousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faith- 
fulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall 
dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down 
with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and 
the fatling together; and a little child shall lead 
them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their 
young ones shall lie down together: and the lion 
shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child 
shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned 
child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den. 
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy 
mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowl- 
edge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." 
(Isa. xi. 1-9.) 

Of the many sons of Jesse the prophet also names 
David as standing in the line of the promised De- 
liverer: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son 
is given: and the government shall be upon his 
shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, 
Counselor, The mighty God, The Everlasting Fa- 
ther, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his 
government and peace there shall be no end, upon 



Messianic Prophecies. 181 

the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to or- 
der it, and to establish it with judgment and with 
justice from henceforth even forever." (Isa. ix. 

We have quoted these prophecies at length, be- 
cause they not only point out the line of Messiah's 
descent, but in unmistakable terms depict his char- 
acter and spiritual reign, bearing us quite away 
from any achievements of temporal power or glory 
of temporal rule. 

Prophecy designates the place where the Christ 
should be born: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, 
though thou be little among the thousands of 
Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto 
me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth 
have been from of old, from everlasting." (Micah 
v. 2.) 

Haggai incited his people to build the sacred 
temple, assuring them that the Messiah should ap- 
pear in it: "And I will shake all nations, and the 
Desire of all nations shall come; and I will fill this 
house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts." (Hag. 
ii. 7.) Malachi also prophesied that the Christ 
should appear in the temple, and that his coming 
should be heralded by a special messenger: "Be- 
hold, I will send my messenger, and he shall pre- 
pare the way before me; and the Lord, whom ye 
seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the 
messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in; 



182 Foundations of Faith. 

behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.'" 
(Mai. iii. i.) 

No temporal ruler was Messiah to be. His own 
nation should reject him and put him to death. 
Here we must put in evidence the whole fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah. Note especially such passages 
as: "We hid as it were our faces from him"; "He 
was despised, and we esteemed him not"; "He is 
brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep 
before his shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his 
mouth." 

The victory which Messiah should win was to 
be spiritual, and achieved through his death. Be- 
yond the scenes of his suffering, his rejection, and 
the pouring out his soul unto death, he should 
"see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied." 
"Therefore will I divide him a portion with the 
great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; 
because he hath poured out his soul unto death: 
and he was numbered with the transgressors." 

Thus have we seen from the beginning of the 
sacred record, and throughout the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures, a line of prophecies, very peculiar 
in their character, and which were wonderfully ful- 
filled in Jesus Christ. His tribe, the place of his 
birth, and the time of his birth, as marked by cer- 
tain attendant historic facts, are all clearly pointed 
out. But, above all, the very extraordinary char- 
acter of him who was the subject of these proph- 
ecies is faithfully set forth — the King who should 



Messianic Prophecies. 183 

set up a kingdom diverse from all kingdoms, whose 
dominion should be reached through death and 
should abide forever. 

The fulfillment of these predictions in the Man 
of Nazareth is too plain to be questioned; and 
there are many more prophecies bearing as strong- 
ly upon the same subject and demanding the same 
conclusion. Indeed, we have here the very heart 
of the Jewish religion, the spiritual goal toward 
which it was always directing the faith of the peo- 
ple. The whole history of the Jewish nation, and 
their entire religious scheme, the significance of 
the covenant, the character of their Jehovah God 
as the loving Father of all humanity, and their 
ideal of his final reign over all the nations, were con- 
stant prophecies of such a consummation as the 
setting up of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. The prophets of the Old Testament, no 
less than the apostles of Jesus, are at the foundation 
of the Christian system, Christ himself being the 
chief corner stone. 



CHAPTER XVL 
Divine Incarnation. 

According to the Bible, the true religion began 
to be taught by direct revelations from God more 
than two thousand years before the Bible itself be- 
gan to be written. The fact, therefore, that rec- 
ords are found to-day, upon tablets and cylinders 
exhumed from the ruins of the cities of ancient 
Babylonia, long antedating the time of Moses, and 
containing traditions which closely parallel the 
Mosaic record, is only such confirmation as that 
record demands for itself. According to the Bible, 
the doctrines of the true religion were never con- 
fined to the Bible, or to those who held, in this 
form, the oracles of God. 

That monotheism was the prevailing faith in 
the earliest ages of human history is now abundant- 
ly proved. The false religions of the world show 
evidence of corruption from a better original, and 
justify Paul's charge upon the heathen, that "when 
they knew God they glorified him not as God." 

But as the center of the scheme of revealed re- 
ligion is the redemption of man by a Saviour, to 
be manifested "in the fullness of times," it is only 
to be expected that some ideas of such a redemp- 
tion should show themselves in the systems of 
heathen religion. 

(i8 4 ) 



Divine Incarnation. 185 

The idea of divine incarnation is not peculiar 
to the Christian religion. Mithras and Zoroaster 
were God-men in heathen faith. Tohe was a God- 
man among the Chinese, Osiris among the Egyp- 
tians, Malicerta among the Phoenicians, Hobal of 
the Arabs, Khan of the Tartars, Apollo of the 
Greeks, Vishnu of the Hindoos; and many other 
like deities of other peoples might we mention. 

When St. John wrote in his Gospel, "In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God; all things were made 
by him," he used the terms and the thoughts of 
Plato, accepting first a philosophical conception 
of that truth which he meant presently to set forth 
in concrete expression. He would also give to 
the general idea of divine manifestation, however 
vague and unsatisfactory in the conceptions of hu- 
man reason, the significance which belonged to it 
as a doctrine of the race, demanded by the con- 
scious needs of the race. 

The Word is the mediutn of revelation. By the 
Logos, the Greek philosopher sought to express 
the idea of divine intelligence going forth in an 
intelligent creation, and the divine will in execu- 
tive functions. Thought is embodied, will re- 
vealed, purpose expressed in the Word. The mani- 
festation of the Infinite and Absolute was the going 
forth of the Word. Thus were all finite and con- 
ditioned things brought into existence. Such a 
thought must have been in the mind of Moses, 



i86 Foundations of Faith. 

when, describing the creation, his constant form of 
statement was, "And God said." 

But a medium of divine revelation through 
which man might hold intelligent communion 
with a personal God philosophy could never find. 
The clearest-sighted thinker lost his way amid the 
shadows, and the most devout soul heard only 
inexplicable whispers. Even philosophy, at the 
end of its struggles, confessed that the world's 
hope was just that which religion, in all its sys- 
tems, had in some sort accepted; that God must 
send a Mediator to men that they might be 
brought into satisfactory experimental relations 
with himself. 

"Men," says Mackay, "cannot worship a mere 
abstraction; they require some outward form in 
which to clothe their conceptions and enlist their 
sympathies." When St. John, therefore, passes 
from abstractions to living realities, and proceeds 
tc write, "And the Word was made flesh and 
dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, as the 
glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of 
grace and truth," he only declares a fact which 
was needed to fulfill a confessed want of all hu- 
manity. 

Divine incarnation may be regarded as a doc- 
trine of essential theology — a hope of the human 
heart, which any system of religion must fulfill, be- 
fore it can fully commend itself to human intelli- 
gence as a perfect and final revelation of God to 



Divine Incarnation. 187 

fallen men. The doctrine of a divine revelation is 
not satisfactory if it fall short of God manifest in 
the flesh. 

Even heathen thought generally conceived that 
the Mediator between God and man must be a be- 
ing God-begotten, woman-born. Only through a 
being who touches alike the divine and human 
nature can there be perfect mediation. He must 
know the will of God, and for our teaching accom- 
plish the will of God in human spheres. He must, 
through the warmth and sympathy of human life, 
commend the divine love to us. Through flesh 
and blood he must teach us how flesh and blood 
are to be sanctified by the indwelling Deity. The 
Son of God must teach us how to become the sons 
of God. We must be shown how humanity comes 
to perfection only in vital union with God. The 
condition of such vital union must be supplied in 
one who approaches us in such a manner, in hu- 
man spheres, that we may know him, beyond 
dream or fancy, and knowing him be assured that 
we know the Father also, and loving him know 
that we love God and are reconciled to him. 

The heathen, in the thought of divine medita- 
tion, had a grasp upon vital truth. They did not 
follow a false faith, but among all the characters 
whom they deified as mediators between man and 
God they found none which fulfilled their hopes. 
A vague poetic conception of mediation was all 
that could be attributed to such characters. Their 



188 Foundations of Faith. 

mediators served the purposes of sentiment and 
fancy, and not the needs of life — a need confessed 
but unsatisfied is all we see in the mediators of hea- 
then systems, just as still appears, where the gospel 
of the grace of God is not preached, in those who, 
clinging to hope, wait the return of Vishnu, of 
Buddha, or Montezuma. 

Closely allied to the idea of mediation is that 
of atonement. All systems of religion are efforts 
to regain, for man, right relations to his Maker; 
and the sense of his fallen and estranged state and 
nature is at the bottom of all. For the recovery 
of right relations to God, more is needed than the 
perfect knowledge of God's will. Man has not 
strength to walk in the straight path, though it 
be opened before him. A sinful nature and num- 
berless transgressions in past life bar approach to 
God. There must be forgiveness and a moral 
change. Here was the deepest problem of reli- 
gion. In this regard, as in respect to a mediator, 
heathen religions confessed a need and expressed 
a hope, but found no fulfillment of that hope. 

The Bible teaches that the idea of atonement for 
man's sin through the blood of a slain victim, was 
held by the first children of a fallen race. It was 
this idea, its confessed guilt and need of redemp- 
tion, that made Abel's offering of the Lamb slain 
acceptable to God, rather than the offering of Cain, 
which expressed only thankfulness for the gifts of 
Nature. The fact stands before us that from the 



Divine Incarnation. 189 

earliest history of our race the offering of blood 
sacrifices has been regarded as an essential element 
of religion. 

We have said that these offerings from the first, 
and down through all religious cults, confessed a 
need and expressed a hope. There is little more 
to be said of the sin offering under the Mosaic dis- 
pensation. No definite interpretation of the sym- 
bol seems to have been given, and the redemption 
to which it pointed was vaguely apprehended by 
the worshiper. Interpreting the sacrifice out of 
his own heart, the worshiper discerned two things 
to be set forth as essential: the offering of a pure 
life, and devotion unto death. The idea of a 
penalty to divine justice was in different ages more 
or less prominent as God's justice or love sug- 
gested the interpretation of the symbol. But of 
the sacrifice it is to be noted that the idea of suffer- 
ing was not emphasized, as if God delighted in 
torture. The animal for the sacrifice was slain 
without torture and in the easiest way. It is not 
suggested that the dying of the victim, in itself, 
made atonement. The blood was used as the aton- 
ing symbol. The victim was slain to obtain the 
blood: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and 
I have given it to you upon the altar to make an 
atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that 
maketh an atonement for the soul." (Lev. xvii. 11.) 
The blood was the symbol of life. This blood was 
poured out at the foot of the altar as the expression 



190 Foundations of Faith. 

of a life devotion. With the idea of dying, because 
of sin, was linked that of a pure life, offering itself 
in love to God. Instead of the worshiper thinking 
of relief from sin, simply because an innocent crea- 
ture had died as the victim of that sin, the cere- 
mony impressed him more deeply of the need of 
purity and a consecrated life. There were no anti- 
nomian suggestions in the Jewish ritual — no sug- 
gestion of deliverance from sin by bare substitution 
of a victim in man's stead. 

The view of atonement which represents it as 
a penalty merely to divine justice, the paying down 
of so much suffering to cancel so much sin, is too 
gross a form of statement to represent fairly the 
principles involved. If the idea of simple substitu- 
tion be accepted, or the payment of a debt, no place 
remains for repentance, faith, or holy living, as es- 
sential to salvation. If the debt is paid, the sinner 
shall never pay it. Lack of faith that it is paid 
may cloud his mind here, but the fact stands, never- 
theless, that the sinner will never have the debt to 
pay. We are told by defenders of the mere substi- 
tution theory that one in prison may have the 
death sentence canceled, but if he believes it not 
canceled it is the same as if it were not; and so 
faith has its use, though it be only to accept a 
finished salvation. The position is untenable even 
on that ground. The unbeliever is not in the state 
of one who is not rescued. If in the sense of strict 
substitution another has died in his stead, he shall 



Divine Incarnation. 191 

not die, no matter how much he fears it. If the 
death sentence is truly canceled, by another, and 
with no reference to aught he can do, the law in 
its moral claims is not sustained but annulled. The 
sinner is free from its claims and its penalties. 

There is in the nature of moral government am- 
ple ground for using the term "God's wrath" in a 
metaphorical sense. Sin, under God's moral gov- 
ernment, has its penalty. It entails suffering by 
the very laws which are essential to moral being. 
From such a standpoint God's wrath toward 
transgressors cannot be too severely drawn. But 
it must be ever held in view that vindictive wrath 
belongs not to God, nor has he any need to uphold 
authority for his own glory. All his dealings with 
man have respect to man's good alone, as a good 
father purposes all things for the welfare of his 
children. God exacts no tributes from man for 
himself, and inflicts no penalties upon man to sat- 
isfy himself, apart from human good. Again, we 
cannot think that there is anything in sheer suffer- 
ing to atone for sin, else sin would work its own 
cure, and the consequence of sin prove the deliver- 
ance from sin at last. But the revelation of a sin- 
less one — God incarnate for us — struggling against 
sin, even unto death, must give the highest con- 
ception both of the terrible nature of sin and the 
divine love which seeks to rescue man from it. The 
misery of sin being inevitable in the laws of moral 
being, to be escaped only by escape from sin itself. 



192 Foundations of Faith. 

the suffering of a Redeemer is fairly expressed as 
a penalty to the law, and a suffering of the just for 
the unjust under the law. But it is the uncon- 
querable love of the Redeemer so revaled that sub- 
dues the sinner's heart, inspires repentance and 
faith, and makes atonement or at-onement an ac- 
complished fact, and an experience of conscious 
salvation. Unless the heart be won, any revelation 
of love, any humiliation or suffering, any penalty 
paid to divine law to win it, is but a provisional sal- 
vation, not yet become effectual — an open door, 
through which man has not yet passed into the 
kingdom of peace. 

Man's salvation is not an inevitable sequence of 
any view of the plan of redemption. The plan may 
be unavailing. Human will remains. Human free- 
dom must be preserved inviolate to preserve moral 
nature. All that divine love can do is to furnish 
the grounds for a right will. 

Such example of love to man, and opposition to 
sin as will draw him to God, in love and faith, 
cannot be given by man himself. Whatever moral 
excellence man may exhibit, his struggle against 
sin is not, in the highest sense, voluntary. Man has 
no choice in entering upon this career of trial and 
pain. He comes into being under the hard con- 
ditions of a fallen nature and a sinful world. He 
enters the field of action because he must, and 
finds that the devil has already preemption rights. 
A battle is to be fought, whether he choose or not. 



Divine Incarnation. 193 

If, in such a state, man choose to fight for the good 
and true, his choice is for himself. He is not giving 
his life to take away the sin of the world, but fight- 
ing for his life against the world's sin. And if the 
sequel of this struggle be to fall under his enemies, 
and die in ignominy and torture, none could take 
inspiration or gather hope from such an example. 
If any revelation be made to man which he may 
recognize as the outstretched hand of God in his 
behalf, it cannot come from such a source as this; 
it cannot be achieved on such a plane as this; it can- 
not stop at such an end as this. The end is the 
blackness of despair if no light of immortality may 
break beyond. Unless man shall see God's own 
hand reached forth for his salvation, he will not 
find sufficient ground for hope. Divine incarna- 
tion could alone fulfill the hope of the world in its 
conscious need of a Mediator and Redeemer. Only 
one who descends from a celestial sphere to take 
part with man in his struggle against sin, whose 
love is the love of the Father, whose word is the 
infallible truth of God, and whose example and 
teaching lead upon the sure path of victory over 
sin and death, can be accepted in man's faith as the 
"Captain of his salvation." Successful struggle 
against sin involved necessities like these — the 
God-man, the immaculate life, and the voluntary 
death — the Redeemer who was from the begin- 
ning a part of the divine plan — a lamb slain from 
the foundation of the world. To such a one He- 



194 Foundations of Faith. 

brew prophecy and rituals clearly pointed, for such 
a one religion vaguely hoped. The Divine Re- 
deemer was the Desire of all nations. 

This revelation of grace and truth was not an 
arbitrary and unmeaning revelation. It was the 
scheme of divine wisdom, the perfect philosophy 
of man's moral nature, and of the laws of moral 
being under which he stood estranged from God, 
and, by nature, in spite of divine compassion, "a 
child of wrath." Man's salvation is only achieved 
through the atonement in those moral affections 
and purposes for which the atonement calls. Only 
he is saved in whom those affections and purposes 
are inspired. No man can be happy in the being 
he hates. The call of this display of God's love, 
which reached its culmination on the cross, is, "I 
pray you be reconciled to God." This is the gos- 
pel message for all time. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

Jesus of Nazareth an Historic Character. 

The course of the world's history had prepared 
the way for Christianity. The doctrines of essen- 
tial theology, such as God, more or less under- 
stood in respect to his character and will, the 
fallen state of man, and the need of a mediator 
to adjust man to right relations toward his Crea- 
tor, were taught in all religious cults. Special doc- 
trines, which were to play a leading part in the 
Christian faith, had, also, been stressed in the 
teachings of heathen philosophy. Socrates and 
Plato had dealt with the doctrine of man's im- 
mortality, and the belief that a future of happi- 
ness or misery awaits men beyond death, accord- 
ing as they lead good or evil lives on earth. The 
Greek and Roman mythologies abounded in pic- 
tures of glory or of gloom, representing the state 
of departed souls. Roman supremacy and tolera- 
tion opened the way for a universal reform. The 
prevalence of the Greek language furnished the 
vehicle for world-wide teaching. The marvelous 
events of Jewish history had attracted the atten- 
tion of learned men of all nations to the claims of 
"the peculiar people/' and made them expectant 
of the fulfillment of Jewish prophecies, which fore- 
told the appearance of the God-man, and set forth 

(i95) 



196 Foundations of Faith. 

the spiritual character and universality of his 
reign. Under these conditions came forth One, 
who deliberately placed himself in the focus of 
Jewish prophecy and of the common faith of the 
world, and challenged all men to test his claim as 
the Son of God and the world's Redeemer. Claim- 
ing God as his Father, he said: "If I do not the 
works of my Father, believe me not." 

Jesus of Nazareth is no myth. He stands far 
apart from all the demigods of mythology. They 
were creations of fancy, wholly, or characters 
which fancy, prompted by the religious principle, 
had built up from traditionary heroes. They were 
received by the people as poetic fictions, embody- 
ing the sentiments, hopes, and wants of man's spir- 
itual nature. Their most earnest devotees were 
led only by vague longings: 

Like children crying in the night; 
Like children crying for a light. 
And with no language but a cry. 

Nevertheless, these creations served Christianity 
in illustrating what the highest human genius 
could do in shaping, even in the realms of the ideal, 
a character that might represent the Saviour of 
men. They add proofs that no human mind could 
have created such a character as is set before us 
by the evangelists. But of this, more hereafter. 

Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth. Mythology 
works upon shadowy forms, which it hides far 
from the open day of man's common life. In re- 



Jesus of Nazareth an Historic Character. 197 

mote ages it seeks its scenes and gathers its ma- 
terials. It retires from the tests of the senses. 
It speaks vaguely, with oracular voice. Jesus is an 
historic character. The time and place of his 
birth are known. He came forth upon a conspic- 
uous stage, before a theater crowded with keen 
spectators. It was the age of Caesar Augustus, 
Horace, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Cicero. His 
theater was the sphere of daily life. He was an 
actor in the light of day, in the presence of thou- 
sands, and in such spheres as challenged the 
judgment of men and appealed to the faith of 
men. He was no recluse. No awe of unap- 
proachableness held men at a distance from him. 
In the sphere of common wants and sympathies 
he touched men more powerfully than any other 
being who ever lived on this earth. His teachings 
are his own, by their very uniqueness. None dare 
to claim them from him. His doctrines descend 
to us, to be judged by their merits; his claims, by 
their fulfillment. 

Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth. The writer 
of a book, the teacher: of a system, the founder of 
an institution is never a myth. No institution or 
work testifies of Apollo, or Hobal, or Vishnu. The 
ancients built temples to Apollo, as men in after 
time have chanted hymns and reared temples to 
false gods of their own creation. But Apollo gave 
to the ancient nothing — neither religious teachings 
nor laws. Fictitious characters leave no footprints ; 



198 Foundations of Faith. 

they found nothing, teach nothing. Confucius is 
not a fiction, nor Buddha, nor Mohammed. They 
powerfully moved the world, and established sys- 
tems which abide. Jesus of Nazareth has in- 
fluenced mankind more than any other teacher. 
He has changed the course of human history as 
no other. Instead of dealing with Jesus of Naz- 
areth as a myth, therefore, we are compelled to 
regard him as an historic character, the most in- 
fluential and important that ever appeared in the 
annals of the human race. 

I am writing this in the year of our Lord 1902. 
We reckon the birth of Jesus of Nazareth as the 
beginning of a new era. History, civilization, hu- 
man life, we are dating from the birth of Jesus. 
Thus do we in America; so do they of England, 
France, Italy, Germany, Russia; so do all the most 
enlightened and powerful and prosperous nations 
of the earth. Jesus is their leader, their highest 
authority, the author of the most inspiring and 
satisfying religious faith the world has known. 

Jesus was the author of Christianity. It was 
not born of priestcraft. The Church was founded 
and widely planted before the first line of the New 
Testament was written. The foundation of the 
Church was faith in Jesus as the Saviour of men. 
The first preachers of this faith died for it. Jesus 
himself died to witness its truths. He who has thus 
changed the courses of human history and life, who 
won the deepest devotion of men, and stirred the 



Jesus of Nazareth an Historic Character. 199 

fiercest hate of men, who stood under the strong- 
est light of human scrutiny, who "did the works 
that none other man did," who died for his cause, 
and for whom his followers died, and about whom 
the nations warred for centuries, is not a myth. 

"That a colossal figure crossed the world's hori- 
zon nineteen hundred years ago no one does, and 
at present no on cares to, deny. Then, by uni- 
versal testimony, commenced a new era. Changes 
great and grand were inaugurated; and what is 
most singular of all, none can now fail to see that 
around the name of a certain One, as an attractive 
center, all those marked events and changes faith- 
fully and forever revolve. He it is, as declared by 
Renan, 'who created the object, and fixed the start- 
ing point, of the future faith of humanity." (Town- 
send.) 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
Jesus of Nazareth — His Claims. 

Jesus distinctly claimed to be God manifest in 
the flesh, and the Redeemer of men, whose com- 
ing was foretold by the prophets. 

His chosen title was the Son of Man. By this 
title it appears that he sought to identify himself 
with humanity, as belonging to the whole hu- 
man race, rather than to any tribe or people. It 
was a title suggestive of the broadest human sym- 
pathies, and that whatever pertained to man was 
important to him. It implied a claim of universal 
brotherhood, and a representative character as the 
perfect man. But, according to previous usage, 
the term implied also such a representative char- 
acter in man as rightly related him to God. It 
was a title applied to the prophets Ezekiel and 
Daniel, men who were bound to their race for suf- 
fering and sendee, but were also channels through 
whom God revealed himself to men. The term 
Son of Man had also been given, in Daniel, to the 
promised Messiah: "And, behold, one like the Son 
of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came 
to the Ancient of days. . . . And there was given 
him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all 
people, nations, and languages, should serve him: 
his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which 
(200) 



Jesus of Nazai' eth — His Claims. 201 

shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which 
shall not be destroyed." (Dan. vii. 13, 14.) 

It will appear, from examination, however, that 
under the title Son of Man Jesus asserted divine 
prerogatives. Witness such statements as these: 
"The Son of man hath power upon earth to 
forgive sins." (Luke v. 24.) The people who 
heard Jesus when he claimed to forgive sins, un- 
derstanding that he thereby asserted divine au- 
thority and power, said: "He blasphemeth. Who 
can forgive sins but God alone?" The answer 
which Jesus made to this cavil was to restore im- 
mediate strength and soundness to the palsied 
man, thus leaving no room to doubt that the di- 
vine sanction was upon his claims. He said: "The 
Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath." (Luke 
vi. 5.) The suggestion is that it was by him the 
Sabbath was ordained, and that of all matters per- 
taining to God's claims or man's duties he was su- 
preme judge. 

Jesus taught that he, the Son of Man, shall judge 
the world. "The Son of man shall send forth his 
angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom 
all things that offend, and them that do iniquity; 
and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there 
shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then 
shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the 
kingdom of their Father." (Matt. xiii. 41-43.) 
"And then shall appear the sign of the Son of 
man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the 



202 Foundations of Faith. 

earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man 
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and 
great glory. And he shall send his angels with a 
great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather 
together his elect from the four winds, from one 
end of heaven to the other." (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31.) 

At the bar of Pilate, when that declaration was 
alone necessary, according to the foregone purpose 
of his judge, to fasten upon him the charge of 
blasphemy and the sentence of death, Jesus de- 
clared himself "the Christ, the Son of God," and 
added, "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man 
sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in 
the clouds of heaven." (Matt. xxvi. 63, 64.) 
"There is here," as Luthardt well observes, "no 
medium between truth and madness." 

Not only did Jesus constantly assert divine 
claims under the title Son of Man, but he also ac- 
cepted the title Son of God, and used this title, 
as correlating him with God the Father in equal 
authority and power. 

When thev were come into the coasts of Cesarea 
Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples, "Whom do men 
say that I, the Son of man, am?" His disciples 
answered, giving only the most favorable opinions 
which they had heard expressed: "John the Bap- 
tist, Elias, or one of the prophets." Jesus, con- 
tinuing, asked, "But whom say ye that I am? And 
Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus an- 



Jesus of Nazareth — His Claims. 203 

swered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon 
Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." 
(Matt. xvi. 13-17.) 

Again, when many of Jesus' followers were for- 
saking him, and he asked his disciples, "Will ye 
also go away? Simon Peter answered him, Lord, 
to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of 
eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou 
art that Christ, the Son of the living God." (John 
vi. 67-69.) John tells us that when Jesus met the 
man whom he had cured of blindness he said unto 
him, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He 
answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might 
believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou 
hast both seen him, and he it is that talketh with 
thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he wor- 
shiped him." (John ix. 35-38.) Of Lazarus's 
sickness Jesus said: "This sickness is not unto 
death, but for the glory of God, and the Son of 
God might be glorified thereby." (John xi. 4.) 

The Son of God is a title which Jesus applies 
to himself, not as it is applied to men in the ex- 
pression of moral likeness, but as one in whom di- 
vine nature is fully represented and embodied. His 
authority over men is the authority of God. His 
word is the word of God, and eternal life and death 
are in his hand. "For as the Father raiseth up the 
dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quick- 
eneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no 



204 Foundations of Faith. 

man, but hath committed all judgment unto the 
Son: that all men should honor the Son, even as 
they honor the Father." (John v. 21-23.) In the 
formulary of baptism Jesus puts his own name be- 
tween the name of the Father and the Holy Ghost. 

Jesus claimed to be one with the Father, and 
equal with him. He said: "I and the Father are 
one"; "He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father." The Jews were offended when he said, 
"Before Abraham was, I am." But his assertion 
of pretemporal existence was positive. It is im- 
possible to deal fairly with the record, or to find 
any reasonable interpretation of his own words, 
and not acknowledge that Jesus claimed to be the 
Son of God in an absolute sense, as divine in na- 
ture, and invested with the fullness of Godhead. 

Jesus represented himself as the great Sin-offer- 
ing for the world. This is strikingly set forth in 
his institution of the Supper. He it is whose blood 
truly atones for men. He is that passover lamb, 
whose blood is "shed for many, for the remission 
of sins." The rescue of the Israelites from the 
angel of death, and their deliverance from bond- 
age, were symbols of that spiritual life and liberty 
which he was come to give unto men. Through 
him the Jewish doctrine of atonement for sin by 
the blood of a sacrifice without spot or blemish 
was to be fulfilled. He said to Nicodemus, "As 
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so 
also must the Son of man be lifted up, and who- 



Jesus of Nazareth — His Claims. 205 

soever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." He said to his disciples, "And 
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto me." Luke represents Jesus, after his res- 
urrection, as commissioning his disciples to preach 
his death and resurrection as completing the 
scheme of salvation for the world. "And he said 
unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it be- 
hooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead 
the third day; and that repentance and remission 
of sins should be preached in his name among all 
nations, beginning at Jerusalem." (Luke xxiv. 
46, 47.) 

Jesus claimed to be an infallible teacher. He 
says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no 
man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye 
had known me, ye should have known my Father 
also." (John xiv. 6, 7.) "The Father loveth the 
Son, and sheweth him all things that himself 
doeth." (John v. 20.) "If ye continue in my word, 
then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know 
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 
(John viii. 31, 32.) 

Jesus claimed to be perfect and without sinT He 
always challenges his enemies to find in his word 
and work anything that is not good, or to con- 
vince him of any sin. He is coeternal with the 
Father, descending to this earth from the glory 
which he had with the Father before the world 
was, revealing the Father's character and will, dy- 



206 Foundations of Faith. 

ing for the world's sin, rising from the dead, going 
back to the Father. Men know the Father in him; 
they come to the Father when they come to him; 
they obey the Father when they obey him. To 
him the Father has committed all authority over 
men as their Teacher, Ruler, Saviour, and final 
Judge. As God is the object of faith and love and 
worship, so Jesus set himself in the center of all 
his teachings, claiming the faith, love, and homage 
of men. "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in 
thee, that they also may be one in us." From his 
mission to earth he returns to the bosom and 
glory of the Father: "And now, O Father, glorify 
thou me with thine own self, with the glory which 
I had with thee before the world was." 

Such were the claims of Jesus of Nazareth. It 
was the acceptance of these claims, by devout men, 
with the tremendous issues which they involved, 
which gave rise to the Christian Church. The 
Church took its beginning immediately after the 
close of Jesus' earthly career, amid the scenes of 
that career and the people who were familiar with 
it. We have first a movement upon a faith estab- 
lished, then the record which is a backward look 
at that movement. The earliest Christian writings 
extant are the letters of Paul, to churches which 
were widespread over the Roman empire. In 
these letters every doctrine is taught concerning 
Jesus that the Church holds to-day. And nowhere 
is any doctrine brought forward as if it were being 



Jesus of Nazareth — His Claims. 207 

stated for the first time, or were in any sense 
original with the writer. The tone which Paul as- 
sumes in speaking to the early Christians is one 
of familiar faith with them. In his thought Jesus 
is the Christ, the Son of God, the promised Mes- 
siah, the perfect revealer of the divine character 
and will, the immaculate one, the Redeemer of 
all men, through whom we have justification, sanc- 
tification, and redemption; who is the object of 
faith, love, and worship, claiming of men a devotion 
superior to the love of the world or of life. 

These were doctrines to which Paul had been 
converted while persecuting the Church which was 
founded on them. That conversion dated back to 
a time within three years of Jesus' death. Even 
at that time there were multitudes who were ready 
to die for this faith. There can be no doubt that 
believers in Jesus in the time of Stephen, the first 
martyr, held the very doctrines which Paul 
preached to the churches. There cannot be the 
shadow of a doubt that the doctrines which the 
Church holds to-day, concerning Jesus Christ as 
the Son of God and the Saviour of men, were held 
from the first by Christ's followers, and that the 
Church, with its doctrines and its professed exper- 
imental proofs of Jesus' saving power, emerged 
immediately and directly from his personal teach- 
ings and life. It was the impact of Jesus' influ- 
ence upon men which produced the Church, com- 
plete and full in its teachings from the start, and 



2o8 Foundations of Faith. 

ever after recognizing only the records of his first 
disciples and his own words as the foundation of 
her faith. 

It was even necessary that in all things where- 
in Jesus would be accepted as more than a mere 
man he should himself assert his claims. The 
Church, accepting his teachings as guide, can only 
teach of him what he taught of himself. No doc- 
trine or claim could be set up for Jesus against his 
own rejection of it, expressed or implied. No 
claim of divine character can be sustained for him 
which his teaching does not claim, and which his 
influence does not continually verify. Let us look, 
then, upon Jesus as he speaks and moves among 
those who first believed on him, that we may bet- 
ter understand by what proofs he won their faith, 
and by what superhuman love he bound them to 
him in a devotion so sublime and enduring. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
The Christ of the Gospels. 

As one who pauses before a world-famed picture, 
to renew upon his mind, for the hundredth time, 
the thought which it embodies, with such sugges- 
tions as may arise of the skill of the painter and the 
sources from which his materials were gathered, 
so we pause to look once more on the picture of 
Jesus of Nazareth as it is drawn in the Gospels. 

Respecting the origin and authorship of these 
Gospels, our chapter on the New Testament canon 
must suffice. We must, moreover, presume upon 
perfect familiarity with these records on the part 
of our readers, and that they are competent to 
weigh and judge correctly the thoughts and con- 
clusions we shall set forth. 

Respecting the character of the Gospels it is but 
noting a confessed truth to say that they are not 
histories, but merely sketches and memoirs. They 
neither attempt fullness of detail nor consecutive- 
ness in the arrangement of that which is written. 
Much was embraced in Jesus' life, much said and 
done by him, of which no record is made. What 
is written is evidence of much that was not writ- 
ten. Many passages suggest this. 

When John was beheaded, his disciples took up 
his body and buried it, "and went and told Jesus." 
14 (209) 



2IO Foundations of Faith. 

They found him teaching and healing in the city 
of Capernaum, and pressed by an eager throng. 
Knowing that such conditions were not congenial 
to bereaved hearts, with tender considerateness he 
said to them, "Come ye yourselves apart, into a 
desert place, and rest awhile"; and, entering into 
a boat, he sailed away on the placid Sea of Galilee, 
that over their sorrowing souls it might shed its 
waves of balm. Surely there was deep divine con- 
verse in those quiet meditative hours, but nothing 
is written. A little while before he was crucified, 
"Jesus walked no more openly among the Jews; 
but went thence unto a country near to the wilder- 
ness, into a city called Ephraim, and there contin- 
ued with his disciples." (John xi. 54.) But John, 
who tells us this, gives not an echo out of this re- 
treat, until the time that Jesus "steadfastly set his 
face to go to Jerusalem." And that any other evan- 
gelist has given us aught that Jesus said or did 
in these days of communing with his disciples there 
is little reason to infer. There is but one instance 
recorded in which Jesus resorted to Gethsemane, 
and yet it is told us that he "oftentimes resorted 
thither with his disciples" ; and the inference is, that 
it was so much a custom, that this fact alone led 
the feet of the betrayer thither at the midnight 
hour. 

There were, also, public discourses and parables 
delivered by Jesus, and "mighty works" wrought 
by him, which are not recorded in the Gospels. 



The Christ of the' Gospels. 211 

Luke relates seven parables delivered by Jesus 
from the ship on the Sea of Galilee to the multi- 
tude on the shore. Mark gives us three. But 
Mark states that there were many others which he 
did not record. John closes his Gospel with the 
statement, "There are many other things which 
Jesus did" — "signs which he did in the presence of 
his disciples, which are not recorded in this book." 
(John xx. 30; xxi. 25.) 

As to the standpoint from which the evangelists 
drew the picture of Jesus, it was an unequivocal 
faith that he was the Christ, the Son of God. The 
suggestion which would give John's Gospel less 
authority than the three earlier Gospels, because 
this faith is manifest in its plan, can weigh nothing 
against the credibility of the record. That it was 
the plan and purpose of the whole record is plain 
to be seen, and it is plainly avowed: "These things 
are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye 
might have life through his name." (John xx. 31.) 
The fact that John draws all which he relates of 
Jesus' words and works to this central idea of his 
divinity is due, first, to the keenly philosophical 
mind of the writer, and, secondly, to the condi- 
tions of that later period at which he wrote, when 
the speculations of the Gnostics were already 
assailing this fundamental tenet of Christian faith. 
From the time that John wrote, "The Word was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld 



212 Foundations of Faith, 

his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father, full of grace and truth," he had the errors 
of Gnosticism in his eye, and meant strongly to 
assert, on the one hand, a divine manifestation, 
which Gnosticism accepted; and, on the other, that 
that manifestation was not an eon or incorporeal 
emanation, but a veritable revelation in flesh and 
blood — a thing which Gnosticism did not admit. 

But there is no place for even the shadow of a 
doubt that the other evangelists, as respects their 
personal faith, stood as strongly upon the doc- 
trine of Jesus' divinity as did John, and that for 
thirty years or more before they wrote, even from 
the day of Pentecost, Jesus' disciples preached, 
and his followers constantly held, that he was the 
Son of God, that he had made atonement by his 
death for the sin of the world, that he was risen 
from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of 
the Majesty in the heavens. The evangelists did 
not write of Jesus from the standpoint of ques- 
tioners, undetermined in their views. And, as the 
occasion of writing and the need of writing seemed 
to them to have arisen after many years, during 
which time all which they then purposed to write 
had been confidently preached, they thought not 
of themselves as giving an original revelation, or 
needing to furnish the Church a detailed history 
of the teachings and acts of the founder of that 
religion which was, even then, widely established. 
As men who had personal knowledge of the founder 



The Christ of the Gospels. 213 

and his work and were chosen to be his witnesses, 
they felt called by the Holy Ghost to write of the 
things which they had personally known: "That 
which was from the beginning, which we have 
heard, . . . which our eyes have looked upon, and 
our hands have handled of the Word of life. ,, (1 
John i. 1.) So, writing, the evangelists did not feel 
called upon to give consecutive or detailed his- 
tory, but to record such things as would set the 
life, works, and words of Jesus behind the then 
existing faith of the Church, as a justification of 
that faith; or, to put the case more directly and 
strongly, to justify themselves for their preaching 
of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, and for that 
unreserved surrender of all worldly things which 
they had made to establish the Church on that 
foundation. Such are the historic facts which 
must be regarded, if we would stand in the view- 
point from which the picture of Jesus was drawn 
by the authors of the four Gospels. 

The evangelists meant to picture to the world a 
divine character. That the character with which 
they dealt was divine was the deepest conviction 
of their lives. Mind and heart thrilled with that 
thought in every touch they gave to that marvelous 
portrait. They meant that the world should fall 
down and worship that character. It was to this 
end that they drew it. Not only John, but all the 
evangelists wrote what they wrote "that we might 
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; 



214 Foundations of Faith. 

and that believing, we might have life through 
his name." Nevertheless, there is inimitable sim- 
plicity and directness in the record, as in the case 
of men who simply give the facts which convinced 
them and moved them so mightily. We are 
shown what sort of character it was and what sort 
of teaching and association gave rise to Christian 
faith and life. 

Yet we claim the right, yea we confess the duty, 
of examining with critical scrutiny the picture set 
before us, that we may judge whether it represents 
a divine original. 

The life of Jesus, for thirty years, is little known. 
The portents attending his birth, the hope confessed 
of Simeon and Anna, seem to have been forgotten, 
save that "Mary hid these things in her heart." 
Brief references give us to understand that Jesus 
grew up to the trade of a carpenter at Nazareth, in 
the home of his parents, Joseph and Mary; that he 
was obedient to them as a dutiful son, was devout 
in spirit, and was looked upon with favor by good 
men; that when he first visited the temple, at twelve 
years of age, the Jewish rabbis were surprised and 
pleased at his piety, wisdom, and docility. The 
statement that "he increased in wisdom and stat- 
ure, and in favor with God and man," suggests 
normal development to the maturity of manhood, 
and removes from our thought supernatural man- 
ifestations. It was, indeed, inevitable that, in 
after time, when Jesus was adored as a God, the 



The Christ of the Gospels. 215 

human fancy should manufacture miracles of his 
childhood and youth, and seek to fill up that void 
in the gospel story with signs and wonders. The 
fact that this was done by many writers, but that 
the evangelists give no place to such fancies, and 
the early Church repudiated them, is valuable tes- 
timony to the fidelity of the Gospels. 

But the fact that nothing supernatural is re- 
corded of Jesus in his youth, and that his life was 
kept within the bounds of human custom — he not 
assuming to teach till he was of legal age — has 
given color to the view of some that divine nature 
did not possess Jesus in its fullness until the bap- 
tism in Jordan, when the Holy Ghost, in visible 
form, descended upon him, and the voice of God 
was heard from heaven, saying, "This is my be- 
loved Son, in whom I am well pleased"; and that 
from that time, "led by the Spirit," he went into 
the wilderness, and "in the power of the Spirit re- 
turned," and in perfect union with Godhead be- 
gan, and carried to conclusion, his mission as the 
Saviour of men. Some there be who have fixed 
in their thought such a theory of incarnation as 
forbids this view; but incarnation, in its conditions 
and methods, is a subject on which we may not 
dogmatize. 

The keynote of Jesus' ministry, as set forth in 
the Gospels, was sounded in his sermon in the 
synagogue at Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord 
is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach 



2i6 Foundations of Faith. 

the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal 
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the 
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to 
set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the 
acceptable year of the Lord." (Luke iv. 18, 19.) 
Jesus here adopts the words of Isaiah. They rep- 
resent one commissioned to proclaim every bless- 
ing, and offer every good within the resources of 
infinite love and power, and his words, 'This day 
is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears," represented 
himself as the especial subject of this prophetic ut- 
terance. 

The first distinctive phase of character which 
we contemplate in Jesus is his beneficence. In 
this every moral quality is embraced. He who 
seeks naught but the good of others, and seeks 
that end with an all-absorbing and self-consuming 
devotion, has every moral power of his nature, un- 
der the sway of the "perfect law of liberty" and in 
the work of love, stimulated to full play. 

Men had been wont to view virtue on the nega- 
tive side. The constant utterance of the law was, 
"Thou shalt not." But in contemplating the char^ 
acter of Jesus Christ the negative view need not 
detain us. The reader will call to mind the tests 
of his patience, humility, forgiveness, and own that 
"when he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he 
was persecuted, he threatened not." He will call 
to remembrance how, when called "a gluttonous 
man and a winebibber," he only reminded the ac- 



The Christ of the Gospels. 217 

cusers that they were as ready to accuse John the 
Baptist for his austere life; how he gently chided 
the anger of his disciples when the Samaritans re- 
fused them lodging; how he spoke without resent- 
ment to Judas his betrayer, was "led as a lamb to 
the slaughter," meek and dumb; and how, in his 
dying agony, he prayed for his murderers. Such 
passages as these, abounding in the sketches given 
us of Jesus' life, are sufficient historical setting 
for claims which he set up for himself when he 
challenged his enemies, "Which of you convinc- 
eth me of sin?" when he says, "I am meek and 
lowly in heart"; "I do always the will of my Fa- 
ther"; "The prince of this world cometh, and hath 
nothing in me." "Holy, harmless, undefiled, sep- 
arate from sinners," has been written of him, and 
no man denies the claim. Not the faintest con- 
sciousness of guilt, nor the recognition of aught 
in himself but a purity which would bear divine 
tests, appears in any utterance of Jesus of Naz- 
areth. 

The bare suggestion that there was an outburst 
of anger in Jesus' cursing the barren fig tree is 
puerile, so plain is it that his purpose was to set 
before the disciples an object lesson, to convey to 
them, in allegorical form, truths concerning the 
character and destiny of the Jewish nation. What 
his own feelings were in the contemplation of that 
destiny, let his weeping and lamentation over Je- 
rusalem interpret. 



218 Foundations of Faith. 

Mark tells us (iii. 5) that Jesus "looked round 
about on them with anger, being grieved for the 
hardness of their hearts." Reproof and condem- 
nation were the demands of the highest holiness in 
the presence of a perverseness and an opposition 
to good which were grounded only in a wicked 
heart. For fallen men and women, self-condemned, 
the need is sympathy and tenderness. And to such 
— the outcasts of society — Jesus was pitiful. But 
when arrogance, and carnal pride, and self-seeking 
usurp the places and functions of the religious 
teacher, and in the name of God trample the peo- 
ple, to assail and expose and condemn such, so far 
from suggesting carnal motives, must be recog- 
nized as the highest exhibition of positive benevo- 
lence and love. When the issue is to support the 
fundamental principles upon which the common 
good of all men rests, the demand is for a courage 
which is ready to assail the evil and die, if need 
be, for the good. It is this which makes glorious 
the hero who dies in battle for a noble cause, and 
enrolls his name among the benefactors of man- 
kind. It is this which makes mercy sterner than 
justice, when the issue is to protect the public 
weal and every man's life and home against a foe. 
As Coleridge has beautifully expressed it, should 
Justice falter in such an issue, Mercy must strength- 
en the hand of the Judge: 

And oh! if some strange trance 

The eyelids of thy sterner sister press, 



The Christ of the Gospels. 219 

Seize Mercy, thou, more terrible, the brand, 
And hurl the thunderbolt with fiercer hand. 

There is a sublime example of this sort of moral 
courage and fidelity to human weal in Jesus' en- 
counter with the scribes and Pharisees, in the tem- 
ple porch on the occasion of his last visit to Jeru- 
salem, and just before the tragic enactments of 
Calvary. It was a final effort on the part of the 
highest authorities of the Jewish Church to silence 
the teacher before that last resort — the taking of 
his life. It was the culmination of opposition on 
the one hand and of fidelity on the other. The 
chief priests, the elders, and scribes, and captains 
of the temple guard approached him in a body, 
and challenged him: "By what authority doest 
thou these things, and who gave thee this author- 
ity ?" Him, whom they had failed to seduce by 
flatteries, or entangle by their wiles, or confound 
by their cunning, they will, at last, meet with au- 
thority. Jesus, recognizing that the last assault 
was upon his courage and fidelity to his mission, 
faced the issue in a manner which surpasses all ex- 
ample in its fearless, strong, even-balanced denun- 
ciations of official and priestly corruption. He de- 
nounces his assailants — those professed guides to 
holiness. — as selfish, deceivers, devourers of widows' 
houses, pretenders, garnished sepulchers, men who 
closed the gate of heaven against the people; and 
his cry, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites!" breaks again and again through his 



220 Foundations of Faith. 

speech like the rolling thunder of a storm, until it 
culminates in the sentence wnich seems to us 
the lightning flash of divine wrath, "Ye serpents, 
ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the 
damnation of hell?" There is not in all that is 
recorded of Jesus, save the agony and prayer on the 
cross, a more sublime example of courage and self- 
abnegation for the welfare of men than this re- 
proof of the Pharisees and scribes. It was made 
in the shadow of the cross, and with the certain 
knowledge that it would precipitate the tragedy 
of the crucifixion. It was this positive, all-con- 
trolling love for mankind which bore Jesus far be- 
yond all negative tests of goodness, so that the 
words "sinless," "guileless," "immaculate," en- 
tirely fail to represent him. His mission and work 
were not to save himself from sin, but to save the 
world from sin. While he owns the infirmities, 
and temptations of a man, he speaks to man as 
his rescuer and Saviour. He says of himself, "The 
Son of man is come to seek and to save that which 
was lost." 

Every word which Jesus speaks and every act 
w T hich he performs is in harmony with this claim. 
He came that men "might have life, and have it 
more abundantly." He came "not to judge the 
world, but to save the world." He made himself 
the center of all his teaching. All the authority and 
power and love of the All-Father is in him, and be- 
lieving on him men find eternal life. In all that 



The Christ of the Gospels. 221 

Jesus does there is manifest this self-consciousness 
of being man's Saviour and Redeemer. He bat- 
tles for full victory over the powers of darkness, 
not for himself, but for the race. He is the Son 
of Man, not as being what man is, but what God 
calls man to be. He is the type of humanity de- 
livered from sin. He leads the way to that de- 
liverance; he gives the power to gain it. He in- 
vites every test that can commend him to man's 
love and faith, that the Captain of our salvation 
may be made "perfect through suffering." He is 
"the bread of life." He dwells in true believers, "a 
well of water, springing up into eternal life." Al- 
ways, this thought of seeking and saving men is 
manifest. No scorn of men, no reviling, turned 
him from it for one moment, and it rose to its 
highest expression in the agony of the cross. The 
cross he looked to as his victory: "And I, if I be 
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
me." How could it have been otherwise than as 
the evangelists record, that victory began with 
Jesus' death? A wild, dark throng with jeers and 
mockeries surged around the dying Christ on Cal- 
vary. But when he had borne the last test of 
torture and insult and said, "It is finished, and 
bowed his head and gave up the ghost," then re- 
deeming love began to be victorious. The cen- 
turion, who led the execution, looked upon the 
dead face of Jesus and said, "Surely this man was 
the Son of God." Those meek eyes, now set in 



222 Foundations of Faith. 

death, rained arrows over all the host that scoffed 
erewhile. Silence and awe took the place of scoff- 
ing. "Every one that came to the sight smote 
upon his breast and returned to the city." Jesus' 
enemies thought to fasten upon him the cross, that 
symbol of infamy and guilt, and sink his name in 
eternai obloquy beneath its weight. But such was 
his moral power that, stained by his blood, the 
cross became the symbol of life and purity and 
salvation — a jewel which the pure in heart will 
cherish forever. 

Jesus' assertion of divinity cannot be separated 
from his assertion of his saving power. And it 
may be said of both that, though his claim was 
clearly made, it was not made by formal proclama- 
tion, but by manifestation in word and deed, which 
left no possible conclusion but that he held him- 
self for a divine person. We have seen that he 
commended Peter for confessing, "Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God," but he charged 
his disciples that "they should tell no man that 
thing." True faith could not rest upon his asser- 
tion of this claim, but his proof of it. Yet, it is 
ever present in his thought. Before he has fin- 
ished his sermon upon the mount, he has trans- 
ported his hearers to the awful scenes of the judg- 
ment day and placed himself on the judgment 
throne; and the ground of acceptance or con- 
demnation before God, and the condition of eter- 
nal weal or woe, are the acceptance or rejection of 



The Christ of the Gospels. 223 

himself. "Many will say unto me in that day, Lord, 
have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy 
name cast out devils, and in thy name done many 
wonderful works? Then will I profess unto them, 
I never knew you; depart from me, ye workers of 
iniquity." He is greater than Moses. He says, 
"Ye have heard," then quotes the very law which 
Moses received of God on Sinai, and proceeds, "But 
I say unto you" He is "greater than the tem- 
ple," "greater than Solomon." He is not simply 
David's son, but "David's Lord." He was "before 
Abraham." He dwelt in divine glory "before the 
world was." Though he is visibly on earth, he is 
still in heaven. The kingdom of God is his king- 
dom. The angels of God are his angels. He is 
Judge of all men. Such statements abound in the 
words of Jesus. The self-consciousness of divinity 
seems never absent from his words and deeds. 

Jesus never speaks as one who doubts. He 
never reasons to a conclusion. No secret is hidden 
from him in the divine will concerning man, nor 
in the human heart in its relations to God. His 
teaching is ever positive, clear, and emphatic. He 
dares to say, "He that heareth my words shall 
know the truth." Thus it is that the self-assertion 
of divine knowledge and authority echoes through 
all Jesus' words like a sub-harmony in music. 
Simple, natural, inimitable in its expression, it 
marks the record as the simple picture of a char- 
acter which never had its like on earth. 



224 Foundations of Faith. 

In harmony with the character and claims of 
Jesus already noticed is the record of his miracles. 
These are only works of beneficence. Never, in 
any case, does he call in supernatural power for 
his own protection. "The Son of man came not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give 
his life a ransom for many." He who created 
bread for others refused to use his power to relieve 
himself under stress of famine. He who raised the 
dead went unresisting to death, declaring that he 
could call legions of angels from heaven to defend 
him from his foes. 

So far as respects himself, in the sphere of hu- 
man needs and sufferings, Jesus taught us to serve 
God in accepting the burdens and results of God's 
laws of nature. He never invoked supernatural 
power to lighten burdens which belong to the 
flesh or to deliver himself from deprivation or pain. 
The perfect example to men, he will not do for 
himself that which other men cannot do. Being 
made under the law and found in fashion as a 
man, he will be obedient unto death, and accept 
no immunity. Were it the will of God that men 
should be delivered from the pains and burdens in- 
cident to those physical laws which he has or- 
dained, Jesus could have set us the example and 

shown us the way to such deliverance. 

The miracles of Jesus have the distinctive char- 
acter that they were manifestations of his own pow- 
er. The prophets who performed miracles appeared 



The Christ of the Gospels. 225 

only as agents for God, coming upon the scenes 
as he directed and acting under his command. The 
wonder-working power belonged not to them. 
They did not claim it as their own, nor did it al- 
ways attend them. It was not at their command. 

But in Jesus the power to work miracles is nor- 
mal and constant. To him they are not miracles, 
but the expression of a power and authority be- 
longing to himself. He waits not the Father's 
command. All that God may do, under the cir- 
cumstances, he does. "My Father worketh hith- 
erto, and I work." Whatever the Father doeth 
this doeth also the Son. He has perfect unity with 
the divine nature, so that he can do nothing con- 
trary to the divine will, but does not inquire as to 
the divine will or invoke divine power. In himself 
divine nature and will abide. 

Jesus does not refer the glory of his wonder- 
ful works to the Father, but claims to stand equal 
in the Father's glory; and men are to believe in 
the Son as they believe in the Father. 

There is this, also, to be observed in regard to 
Jesus' miracles: they are not portents of power 
to assert the existence and overwatching prov- 
idence of God, as the signs of Moses and the 
prophets; but are, for the most part, revelations 
and operations addressed to the spiritual state of 
men in line with this claim as a personal Saviour 
from sin. The faith or unfaith of others had noth- 
ing to do with those manifestations of power which 
*5 



226 Foundations of Faith. 

God gave his people through Moses, for they were 
to ground them in the doctrine of the one God, the 
Lord Jehovah, and his moral government over 
men. The miracles attributed to the prophets, in 
after time, were of the same character. But Jesus 
makes the exercise of faith by others the condi- 
tion of manifesting his power. He seeks to draw 
men into spiritual fellowship with himself, and to 
impart himself to them. If this is not a uniform 
condition, it is so far general as to constitute an 
altogether unique feature in Jesus' work. One 
will naturally say that before Jesus had a right to 
claim faith in himself as a worker of miracles, or 
one who could forgive sins and heal the souls of 
men, he must lay the foundation of such faith in a 
voluntary and unconditioned display of supernat- 
ural power. And here, as in every other respect, we 
are called to mark the consistency of the gospel 
story, in the fact that such was the beginning of 
Jesus' miracles. The turning of water into wine, at 
the marriage feast of Cana, was solicited by no one, 
nor was it to convey directly any spiritual blessing 
tc any one. It was the necessary form of entrance, 
however, upon that ministry of "mighty works" 
which lay before the Saviour — a ground furnished 
to faith in his divine power. "This beginning of 
miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and mani- 
fested forth his glory, and his disciples believed on 
him." (John ii. n.) 

Following this introduction, Jesus' miracles 



The Christ of the Gospels. 227 

were ministries of love and saving power, which 
went forth in answer to that personal faith which 
was to be set before all the "heavy laden" as the 
condition of spiritual deliverance and rest in him. 

In respect to teaching, there was never any to 
compare with Jesus. In the beginning of his min- 
istry he breaks through formalism and the mere 
letter of commandments, and the dead works and 
ritualistic piety of the Pharisees, and calls men to 
enter into a sphere of communion with God where 
the very nature of man is transformed and made 
instinct with divine impulses. Negative piety sinks 
out of sight, and the "Thou shalt not" of the law 
is forgotten. It is superseded by the love which is 
a law unto itself. Purity of heart which always 
sees God, hungering and thirsting after righteous- 
ness, love even for one's enemies, a compassion for 
all men like that of the All-Father — such motives 
only can make men the children of the Father in 
heaven and pass them into the realm and reign of 
that kingdom of heaven which he has come to es- 
tablish; and he says, in the face of the most punc- 
tilious legalists, "Except your righteousness shall 
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Phar- 
isees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. " 

Jesus is not provincial. He stands not upon 
any national sentiments. He knows neither high 
nor low, bond nor free, Jew nor Gentile, in his 
teaching. Putting aside everything but principles, 



228 Foundations of Faith, 

he gives rules and precepts which are for all na- 
tions, and for all time. His appeal to the human 
conscience can never lose its power, nor can his au- 
thority be circumscribed by conditions of time or 
place. Other teachers have had their day, other 
systems have passed. In the calm self-confidence 
that what he teaches shall hold the conscience of 
the world forever, he says, "Lo, I am with you al- 
way, even unto the end of the world. 7 ' 

Is it necessary to argue that such a picture as 
is set before us in the Gospels was not within the 
power of human invention? The character of Jesus 
of Nazareth is original at every point. It is not 
paralleled in any one, or suggested in all human 
examples. Xo production of the human mind ever 
approached it before. It seems absurd to suggest 
invention, in view of such a picture. And we need 
not here press into service that axiom of Hugh 
Miller, respecting the limitations of human genius, 
that "no dramatist can paint taller than himself." 
We should hesitate to apply this in the moral realm. 
It is true in the sphere of the purely intellectual. 
He who portrays an imaginary hero cannot endow 
his creation with more wit, or learning, or judg- 
ment, or genius than he himself possesses. But 
this cannot be said of morals. It would require a 
Shakespeare to invent a Shakespeare; but a poor, 
groveling sinner, who knows not how to love or 
forgive, can portray and extol love and pity, and 
represent scenes and characters in which these vir- 



The Christ of the Gospels. 229 

tues are beautifully exhibited. Neither is the in- 
ventor here left wholly to the guidance of exam- 
ples known. He draws materials out of his own 
moral consciousness. Man's moral ideals have al- 
ways been higher than his attainments. Here every 
dramatist paints taller than himself. The con- 
sciousness of his fallen nature is only impressed 
upon man by an ideal of goodness which is unat- 
tained and unattainable in human strength. Only 
under such conditions does conviction of sin arise 
and the sense of need of divine aid. It was not 
the teaching of Moses nor the teaching of Jesus 
w r hich gave to man first this sense of moral thrall- 
dom, although all clearer revelations of moral light 
deepen that conviction. But where the nations 
dwell under the dimmest starlight of natural reli- 
gion, there is confessed the fact of a sinful nature 
and the need of divine deliverance. 

Though bound by obstructions of clay to this sphere, 
Our hearts may aspire to a better to rise; 

Yet evil the weight is that fixes us here, 

And frail are our pinions, and far are the skies. 

It cannot be said that it is only the reality of 
Jesus' life and teaching which has given to man 
moral ideals above himself, and even above all hu- 
man example. 

And yet, without the slightest misgiving, we 
must pronounce the picture of Jesus Christ, as pre- 
sented in the Gospels, as a thing impossible to hu- 
man invention. That character, even in its moral 



230 Foundations of Faith. 

manifestations, was never approached in the realm 
of the ideal. It seemed necessary that man's 
thought of goodness should be bounded with 
thoughts of God and his law, and of a subordinate 
creature moved by considerations of divine au- 
thority, and fear of divine judgments. Man's 
ideal of moral excellence was necessarily limited 
by his idea of God. A love which was its own 
law, and beneficence which, instead of service of 
God, was even as God himself stooping to earth, 
was surely not a conception which any man would 
attempt to embody in flesh and blood, and set 
forth as the ideal man. For though we have 
acknowledged the idea of a Mediator, revealed in 
human form, as an ancient and almost world-wide 
doctrine, the infinite distance there is between 
the character of Jesus and any of the creations of 
the human mind, in this regard, is testimony that 
such a character, as a human conception, was im- 
possible. 

Neither did the Jewish conception of God fur- 
nish ground for such a character as that attributed 
to Jesus, had it been the purpose of the evangelists 
to represent their own Lord Jehovah under a veil 
of flesh. Jesus gave to man new conceptions of 
God. He came to show us the Father, to invest 
our thought of God with feelings of tenderness 
and trust; and the distinguishing point in his reve- 
lations is the better view of God himself. There 
were prophetic suggestions, indeed, pointing the 



The Christ of the Gospels. 231 

way from Sinai to Calvary. But Jewish exclusive- 
ness and pride, or even the highest type of Jewish 
piety, drew no such picture of Immanuel — God- 
with-us — as could represent Jesus Christ. 

The character of Jesus is drawn dramatically 
by all the evangelists. They do not describe Je- 
sus. He appears upon the stage to speak and act 
for himself. His teachings are not such as any set 
of men, no matter how highly gifted, could have 
invented. His parables and discourses were ut- 
terly beyond the capacity of John the fisherman, 
or Matthew the tax-gatherer. Jesus "spake as 
never man spake." It was so declared in his day, 
and is so confessed now. 

The writers of the Gospels convince us of fidel- 
ity and sincerity at every point. The setting of 
environment which they give to Jesus is most 
accurate as respects the conditions of the times, 
Jewish modes of life and thought, and the stage to 
which religion and religious ideas had been devel- 
oped. The writers represent themselves as being 
taught at every step, constantly surprised and 
thrown into deeper pauses of thought, by the words 
of the Master. They are men possessed of the com- 
mon ideas of their nation, the common prejudices. 
Jesus is ever leading upon a path which is shad- 
owed with mystery, and when they follow wonder- 
ing, half committed, often misunderstanding their 
Teacher, often needing to be reproved, and, at 
last, when Jesus dies upon the cross even their 



232 Foundations of Faith. 

hope that "it was he who should redeem Israel'' 
died also. Such a scheme of redemption was not 
of their planning or conception. 

But it seems a waste of words to argue that 
Jesus Christ was really such as the evangelists rep- 
resent. Their own lives and works are an answer 
which renders any other view absurd. They did 
not invent a character and then run such careers 
of suffering to sustain a known fiction. The way 
in which they went was not of their choosing. Here 
the words of the Master are manifestly true: "Ye 
have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." They 
did not create Jesus; he created them. He made 
them what they were. His words, his example, and 
his spirit had transformed them, had given them 
experiences which verified the high truths which 
they taught in his name. Under the power of 
these truths and experiences they had renounced 
all worldly things, and given themselves to unparal- 
leled self-denials and sufferings for the salvation of 
men; and this they had done for many years before 
they wrote these memoirs of the Master. Power 
had gone forth from that wonderful life and char- 
acter which had already made thousands upon 
thousands of men and women believers and new 
creatures in Christ, before Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
and John wrote the story of Jesus of Nazareth. It 
is these indubitable facts of history, and this self- 
verifying character of the faith in Christ, that ren- 
der it impossible to give even serious thought 



The Christ of the Gospels. 233 

to the claim that the character of Jesus was in- 
vented. 

There have not been lacking learned men and 
strong reasoners to oppose the Christian doctrine 
of divine incarnation in Jesus Christ; and yet few 
have attempted to argue that Jesus Christ was to 
any extent an imaginary character. A real per- 
sonality, the most powerful which was ever pro- 
jected upon the current of human history, cannot 
be denied. But some sort of union with God, some 
sort of acting under the divine guidance, is con- 
trived, other than Christian faith asserts, to explain 
the wonderful phenomenon; the one point aimed at 
being to eliminate the supernatural and to show 
in Jesus Christ, not God stooping down to this 
world, but man raising himself up to God. Ah! 
could we but believe that evolution had produced 
but this one perfect flower of humanity, we might 
deny total depravity, the need of atonement and 
regenerating grace, and still talk of salvation for 
man. 

Let us hear some of the utterances of great men 
who have assailed the doctrine of God incarnate 
in Jesus Christ. What do they make of Christ? 

Richter assailed Christian doctrine, but called 
Christ "the purest of the mighty, and the mightiest 
of the pure, who, with his pierced hands, raised 
empires from their foundations, turned the stream 
of history from its old channels, and still continues 
tc rule and guide the ages." 



234 Foundations of Faith. 

Fichte, who is deemed a skeptic and an atheist, 
owns Jesus as the greatest character the world has 
known. "Till the end of time, all the intelligent 
will bow low before Jesus of Nazareth, and all will 
humbly acknowledge the exceeding glory of this 
great phenomenon. His followers are the nations 
and generations." 

Hegel, from the standpoint of his philosophy, 
speaks of Jesus of Nazareth as "the person in whose 
self-consciousness the unity of the divine and hu- 
man first came forth, and with an energy that, in 
the whole course of his life and character, dimin- 
ished to the very lowest possible degree all limita- 
tions of this unity. In this respect he stands alone 
and unequaled in the world's history.'' 

This idea, suggested by Hegel, is substantially 
that of Renan, who, finding it impossible to doubt 
the substantial truth of the gospel record, still con- 
ceived of Jesus as divine only as lofty genius, and 
pure instincts, and immaculate life, and communion 
with the divine and spiritual may make a man the 
Son of God. Renan says: "Jesus has no visions; 
God does not speak to him from without. God 
is in him; he feels that he is with God, and he 
draws from his heart what he says of his Father. 
He lives in the bosom of God by uninterrupted 
communication; he does not see him, but he un- 
derstands him without need of thunder and burn- 
ing bush like Moses, of a revealing tempest like 
Job, of an oracle like the old Greek sages, of a 



The Christ of the Gospels. 235 

familiar genius like Socrates, or of an angel Gabriel 
like Mohammed. . . . Between thee and God 
there will be no longer any distinction. Complete 
conqueror of death, take possession of thy king- 
dom, whither shall follow thee, by the royal road 
which thou hast traced, ages of worshipers. 

"Whatever may be the surprises of the future, 
Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will 
grow young without ceasing; his legend will call 
forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the 
noblest hearts; all ages will claim that, among the 
sons of men, there is none born greater than Jesus." 

Instead of an ideal character, Renan sees in Jesus 
a personality towering above the outlines which 
the evangelists have given. He says: "Far from 
having been created by his disciples, Jesus appears 
in all things superior to his disciples. They, Paul 
and St. John excepted, were men without talent 
or genius. . . . Upon the whole, the charac- 
ter of Jesus, far from being embellished by his biog- 
raphers, has been belittled by them. 

"Jesus is unique in everything, and nothing can 
compare with him. He is a man of colossal di- 
mensions, the Adorable One, who shall preside 
over the destinies; to whom universal conscience 
has decreed the title Son of God." 

Yet Jesus was not the Son of God in Renan's 
thought as one who dwelt in glory with the Father 
before the world was, and who came forth from 
the Father to reveal to us divine things; but Son 



236 Fou?idations of Faith. 

of God as the perfect man, whose relations to God 
were perfect; the Son of God as man may reach up 
to God, and not as God reaching down to man. 

We might greatly extend this citation of testi- 
mony from men who, rejecting the doctrine of in- 
carnation as formulated by the Church, yet, in the 
direct contemplation of Jesus' character found no 
titles or terms to qualify that character less than 
"the Divine," "the Son of God." But one more ex- 
ample must suffice. 

William Ellery Channing, the father of American 
Unitarianism, says: "I confess, when I can escape 
the deadening power of habit, and can receive the 
full import of such passages as the following: 'Come 
unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest/ 'I am come to seek and 
to save that which was lost/ 'He thatconfesseth me 
before men, him will I confess before my Father 
in heaven/ 'Whosoever shall be ashamed of me be- 
fore men, of him will the Son of man be ashamed 
when he cometh in the glory of the Father, with 
his holy angels/ 'In my Father's house are many 
mansions; I go to prepare a place for you'; I say, 
when I can succeed in realizing the import of these 
passages, I feel myself listening to a being such as 
never before and never since spake in human lan- 
guage; I am awed by the consciousness of great- 
ness which these simple words express; and when 
I connect this greatness with the proofs of Christ's 



The Ch?'ist of the Gospels. 237 

miracles, I am compelled to exclaim with the cen- 
turion, Truly this was the Son of God!' 

"Here I pause; and, indeed, I know not what 
can be added to heighten the wonder, reverence, 
and love which are due to Jesus. When I con- 
sider him, not only as possessed with the con- 
sciousness of unexampled and unbounded majesty, 
but as recognizing a kindred nature in human be- 
ings, and living and dying to raise them to a par- 
ticipation of his divine glories — and when I see 
him, under these views, allying himself to men by 
the tenderest ties, embracing them with a human- 
ity which no insult, injury, or pain could for a mo- 
ment repel or overpower — I am filled with won- 
der, as well as reverence and love. I feel that this 
character is no human invention, that it was not 
assumed through fraud, or struck out by enthu- 
siasm, for it is infinitely above their reach. 

"When I add this character of Jesus to the other 
evidence of his religion, it gives, to what before 
seemed so strong, a new and a vast accession of 
strength. I feel as if I could not be deceived. 
The Gospels must be true. They were drawn from 
a living original; they were founded on reality. 
The character of Jesus is not a fiction; he was what 
he claimed to be, and what his followers attested/' 



CHAPTER XX. 
Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection. 

The doctrine of Jesus' resurrection is funda- 
mental to the Christian system. Without this doc- 
trine, the Christian Church would never have come 
into existence. In view of what Jesus taught con- 
cerning himself, his resurrection from the dead 
could alone set upon his claims the unquestionable 
seal of divine authority and truth, and present him 
to the world as the revealer of the way into eternal 
life. If his career had ended at the cross; if, in the 
darkness of the grave, he had been hidden from the 
world forever, instead of inspiration and hope for 
the good man in that career, no example could 
have preached so powerfully of darkness and de- 
spair. When the most divine in spirit and char- 
acter of all men, devoting himself to the one pur- 
pose of saving men, had fallen under shame and 
scorn and ineffable torture at the hands of those 
who professed to love goodness and teach the will 
of God, what inspiration to goodness had there 
been remaining still to man? 

Every essential doctrine of the Christian religion 
requires the support afforded in the doctrine of 
Jesus' resurrection. His own divine nature, the re- 
demption made for us by his death, the assurance 
of life beyond the grave, and personal salvation 

(233) 



Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection. 239 

through faith in him who claims to be for us the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life, would all fall into 
confusion together without this support. The res- 
urrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead is the 
keystone of the entire arch of Christian doctrine. 
No one ever gave stronger expression to this fact 
than the apostle Paul. He says: "If Christ be not 
risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is 
also vain." He who claimed to come forth from 
the depths of eternity, to connect himself with hu- 
man nature and life, needed to give proof that he 
had returned to the bosom and glory of the Fa- 
ther. That all his teaching and work might not end 
in the darkness of despair, he needed to show his 
connection with the spirit world, and reveal him- 
self as King in the spirit realm. To furnish motives 
to men to renounce the world for his sake and 
choose the path which he trod, Jesus Christ 
needed to "abolish death and bring life and im- 
mortality to light," leading other where than sim- 
ply into the darkness of the grave. 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is, according to 
Christian teaching, asserted by two classes of evi- 
dence — the historical and the experimental. Ac- 
cording to the gospel history of the founding of 
the Church, Simon Peter, in his sermon on the day 
of Pentecost, challenged his hearers to regard two 
classes of evidence then presented to the fact of 
Jesus' resurrection, namely, (1) the testimony of 
competent human witnesses, who were able to es- 



240 F oundations of Faith. 

tablish the fact, so far as human testimony could 
establish anything supernatural; and (2) the di- 
rect witness of the Holy Ghost in answer to the 
testimony which the apostles bore. 

"We are witnesses/' said Peter. It is impossible 
to doubt that the apostles were convinced of Jesus' 
resurrection. Their preaching of this doctrine, 
under circumstances which placed them beyond 
any temporal motive or interest in this matter, is 
the proof of their sincerity. They entered upon 
the public proclamation of this doctrine in the face 
of that opposition to Jesus which had put him to 
death. They had nothing to expect but just such 
persecutions as did follow. They, according to the 
gospel record, had been assured, by their Master, 
that they should be hated and put to death if they 
followed him, and were his faithful witnesses. If it 
were possible to doubt what is told us of the Mas- 
ter's teaching in this regard, it is not possible to 
question the facts of history with which we are 
dealing here, namely, that the disciples of Jesus 
did, in the face of continued persecution, and at the 
cost of their lives, testify to the resurrection of 
their Master. 

Further, these disciples began to bear this tes- 
timony upon the very spot where the things which 
they asserted should have occurred, and to the 
people who were of all best prepared to judge of 
what they asserted. It was in the city of Je- 
rusalem, and within fifty days of the events re- 



Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection . 241 

ferred to. Now the crucifixion of Jesus, on the 
one hand, and, on the other, the establishment of 
the Church in Jerusalem, on the faith that he rose 
from the dead, are historic facts. We are able to 
establish both of these facts outside of the gospel 
record. Tacitus says, in his Annals, that "the Chris- 
tians took their name from one Christ, who, dur- 
ing the reign of Tiberius, was sentenced under 
Pilate." Lucianus calls Jesus "the great man who 
was crucified in Palestine"; and, again, "the cruci- 
fied sophist, who had been the author of a new re- 
ligion." Josephus says: "In those days lived Jesus, 
a wise man, for he performed several extraordinary 
works and made many Jews and heathen his fol- 
lowers. When Pilate had condemned him, on the 
accusation of our most prominent men, those who 
first loved him did not forsake him; and, to this 
day, the sect of Christians, called after his name, 
have not died out." 

Profane history shows us the Christian Church, 
widespread, within a generation after Christ, and 
claiming its origin and all its traditions from Je- 
rusalem. None questions that it had its begin- 
ning there, and that it arose from the preaching 
of Jesus' immediate disciples, following directly 
upon his crucifixion. Those who seek to practice 
imposition place the scenes and events of which 
they testify in distant lands and times. Thus the 
teachers of heathen mythologies conjured up from 

the remote past shadowy forms and creations of 
16 



242 Foundations of Faith. 

fancy, to please national pride, or feed the yearn- 
ings of religious faith, or to make allegorical set- 
ting for metaphysical truths. The disciples of 
Jesus asserted facts within the reach of their hear- 
ers. They claimed no knowledge superior to that 
which the hearers might attain. "This Jesus was 
known by you; he performed miracles here in your 
city; your rulers put him to death, and he is risen 
from the dead" — such was the form of their testi- 
mony. They based nothing on supernatural knowl- 
edge or divine revelation. If it had been possible 
to refute their statements, the Jewish leaders who 
opposed them, and who were charged with the 
greatest sin by their preaching, had every oppor- 
tunity, motive, and resource for refutation. Even 
the dead body of Jesus could have been quickly 
produced. The statement which the gospel record 
says those Jewish leaders set afloat, namely, that 
the whole Roman guard, set to watch the sepul- 
cher, went to sleep, and that while they slept the 
disciples came and stole the body of Jesus, though 
the best answer which their cunning or unbelief 
could devise, is not worthy of serious notice. That 
the disciples of Jesus thus united to lay the founda- 
tion of a false faith, and then unitedly surrendered 
all things, even to life, to establish that faith, is 
utterly beyond belief. 

The history of the disciples is not one of self- 
seeking. Selfish motives never appear in their con- 
duct at any point. Everything goes to prove that 



Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection. 243 

they had the deepest convictions of duty, and that 
they believed that unspeakable blessings to man- 
kind were lodged in their mission and message. 
They sought the salvation of men. They thought 
to lift up men into higher life. They were philan- 
thropists of the highest type. Their lives were 
such as neither carnal motives nor heathen faith 
ever produced. A deep conviction of the truths 
of Christianity and an impulse of divine love — call 
it "the enthusiasm of humanity" if you will — from 
Christ himself, is the only explanation of such lives 
as the apostles led. 

And let any one who would call these disciples 
sincere men but misguided in their faith, that to 
them was committed the highest, noblest mission 
ever undertaken for the race, judge now, by all that 
Christianity has brought to the world, whether 
they were deceived or not. A leaven of divine 
eternal love has gone forth with the message of 
these disciples of Jesus, which has pervaded every 
circle and condition of human life and given man 
new life and hope. 

There is not a trace of fanaticism in the work 
of these disciples of Jesus. Fanaticism is intense 
in its advocacy, but resentful when opposed. It is 
fitful and inconsistent. It has no reasons to justify 
its conclusions. It demands subordination to it- 
self, and does not stoop to serve others. It does 
not choose the path of humanity or self-renuncia- 
tion. But the disciples of Jesus were consistent 



244 Foundations of Faith. 

in their teachings, consistent in their convictions, 
and in their lives as judged by their faith. They 
were patient and loving in their zeal. The faith 
which they professed has been the mightiest of all 
influences to bless the world. Their lives, in the 
light of their faith, are sublime examples of fidelity 
and truth. 

As respects their information, the disciples were 
competent witnesses. Jesus was as well known to 
them as any man might be known to others. Sin- 
cere men may be misled by statements of others 
in whom they trust. So faith begets faith, and one 
believes in another's belief. The faith in Jesus did 
not come to the disciples from a distance. They 
did not receive it at second hand. Jesus was not 
a hero seen by them through other men's fancies. 
"That which our eyes have seen, which our ears 
have heard, and our hands have handled" is the 
category of facts to which they depose in evidence. 

They were not men of easy credulity. An open 
and empty sepulcher had not convinced them. The 
testimony of "certain women" that Jesus was risen, 
and that they had seen him r made them astonished, 
but did not convince them. Frequent appearances 
to many witnesses, not as an apparition, or a vision 
of the night, but as Jesus walking with them in 
the light of day, talking with them as a man, yet 
as man could not talk; his commission to them to 
preach salvation in his name, his ascension to heav- 
en in their sight, after various manifestations run- 



Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection. 245 

ning through a period of forty days — such were 
the facts asserted by the witnesses of Jesus' resur- 
rection, as the ground of their faith. Their testi- 
mony is consistent. It is self-supporting. Its va- 
riety of statement excludes the idea of collusion; its 
substantial agreement is proof that it had facts for 
its foundation. 

There is consistency in the story of Jesus' res- 
urrection in another point of view. It is in har- 
mony with the whole gospel story and really de- 
manded for its unity and consistency. Strange 
as the story of Jesus' resurrection may seem, the 
story of his life and work and wondrous char- 
acter is not complete or consistent without this 
story of his resurrection. The sequel of such a 
career and such claims must be the breaking of 
the full light of heaven upon the finished work. 
For it is not for himself, but for humanity, that 
Jesus appears upon this earth; and the blessings 
he comes to bestow are made possible only to faith 
in him as the revealer of the perfect will of God — 
God manifest in the flesh, the Saviour of the world. 
Without such faith in him, according to his own 
testimony, his mission fails; but in order to such 
faith we must see Jesus emerge into divine glory 
beyond the grave. 

The testimony of the apostles was believed by 
those who heard it. The record says three thou- 
sand accepted the faith the first day it was preached 
in Jerusalem, and that the number had grown to 



246 Foundations of Faith. 

eight thousand a few days afterwards. However 
this may have been, there is no questioning the 
fact that the Church was established first in Jeru- 
salem, and that the number of its members grew 
rapidly. 

We can no more question the sincerity of the 
first believers than we can question the sincerity 
of the first preachers of the faith. The all-con- 
trolling truth was that Jesus was risen. This was 
announced, not as a theory or conclusion of any sys- 
tem of reasoning or doctrine, but as an historic fact, 
within hand's touch and proof of those to whom 
it was declared; and the sequel shows that the fact 
was believed before it was preached, and that the 
proclamation came like fire upon fuel prepared for 
the flame. The people accepted the faith of salva- 
tion through the risen Christ, in full view of a rising 
storm of persecution which soon broke upon them 
in a rain of blood. 

But Peter also claimed that present experimen- 
tal evidence attested the truth of his preaching, 
that Jesus was risen from the dead. The power 
with which the message struck upon the con- 
sciences of men, and its effect in moving them to 
confess their sins, and turn to the obedience of 
Christ, against all worldly motives, he declared 
to be nothing less than the manifestation of the 
Holy Ghost, setting the seal of God's approval 
upon the faith in a risen Christ. 

The story of Pentecost, especially, presents the 



Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection. 247 

fact that full conviction of the doctrines of Christ's 
divinity, his atonement for men, his resurrection, 
and that salvation is by him alone, does not avail 
to give men strength to renounce all things for 
a spiritual life. These convictions the disciples 
themselves felt, and confessed also the commis- 
sion, laid on them, to preach to the world the gos- 
pel of salvation through Jesus of Nazareth. But 
they were only made triumphant over carnal in- 
fluences by the "power from on high" which came 
upon them in the descent of the Holy Ghost. So, 
when thousands cried, under the apostle's preach- 
ing, "What must we do to be saved?" and, when 
they had accepted Christ as their Saviour, rejoicing 
in their deliverance from sin, the preacher pointed 
to these results as operations of the Holy Ghost, 
and the divine seal upon the message which he 
had delivered. 

"This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all 
are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand 
of God exalted, and having received of the Father 
the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth 
this, which ye now see and hear." (Acts ii. 32, 
33.) Not the speaking with tongues, merely, on 
the part of the apostles, but the marvelous effect 
of the message upon those who received it, is here 
referred to. As we are not dependent upon the 
testimony of the gospel record for evidence of the 
influence here appealed to, it being claimed by 
Christianity as a perpetual manifestation, we have 



248 Foundations of Faith, 

regarded it as a form of proof belonging legiti- 
mately to our argument. 

Incorporated in the Christian teaching is the 
claim that Jesus himself promised that the Holy 
Ghost should be his witness forever. By the power 
of the Holy Ghost, and swayed by his influence, 
men should know that Jesus was no less than God 
manifest in the flesh for human redemption, and 
that they had come into possession of the salva- 
tion promised. "At that day ye shall know that I 
am in my Father, and ye in me. and I in you." 
(John xiv. 20.) "He that loveth me shall be loved 
of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest 
myself to him." (John xiv. 21.) "I will not leave 
you comfortless: I will come to you." (John xiv. 
18.) These and similar promises made by Jesus, not 
to his disciples only, but to all true beievers and 
followers in future time, demand of the Church 
continual proof that the Christian's faith is not in 
a dead hero, but in a living Saviour. 

The gospel claims for Jesus a faith which cannot 
be placed in any mere man. A great teacher he 
was, indeed; so was Socrates, so was Plato, a great 
teacher. A peerless example of moral purity was 
Jesus,, but he claims our faith not merely as the 
Way and the Truth, but as the Life also — the giver 
of a new life to men. "As thou hast given l}im 
power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life 
to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life 
eternal, that they might know thee the only true 



Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection . 249 

God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.'' 
(John xvii. 2, 3.) "But as many as received him, 
to them gave he power to become the sons of 
God, even to them that believe on his name: 
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of 
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." 
(John i. 12, 13.) We can give no reasonable in- 
terpretation to such scriptures which will exclude 
the claim of a direct operation of the Holy Ghost, 
renewing the nature of the believer in Jesus. The 
faith required in him goes beyond the acceptance 
of a wise teacher or a noble example. That which 
it calls for is surrender to Jesus as a living Saviour 
and a reigning King. The world at large accepts 
Jesus as a sage, but he who only regards him thus 
has not the faith in him which the gospel demands. 
Trust in him as a divine Saviour is demanded, and 
the experimental evidence that such trust is not 
misplaced is guaranteed. 

The Christian faith puts the believer upon 
ground to verify the fact that Jesus is risen from 
the dead, in Jesus' own answer, through the Holy 
Ghost as promised. Deliverance fro.m the bondage 
of sin, immediate change of affections and motives 
and experience, a conscious passing from death 
unto life — such are the proofs promised that he 
who accepts Jesus as a living divine Saviour does 
not trust in vain. 

It is not even in a theoretical form that the true 
believer accepts Jesus as a Saviour. One who 



250 Foundations of Faith. 

passes not beyond the theory, and the intellectual 
assent, is not a true believer. He is called upon to 
make trial of his belief in full personal surrender to 
Jesus as his Saviour and King; and if no joy comes 
tc his heart, no strength against sin, no relief to 
the condemned soul, then will the promises of 
Jesus fail. The verification of the faith in him as 
a Saviour will be wanting; the claim will refute 
itself. 

It was upon the verification of the doctrine that 
Jesus was risen and enthroned at the right hand of 
God the Father that Peter stood upon the day of 
Pentecost. Not alone that which was past, of 
which he said "all we are witnesses," but "that 
which you now see and hear," was presented in 
evidence. We take up this form of evidence be- 
cause it, too, has passed into history, and, accord- 
ing to the claim of the Church, should be an his- 
toric fact manifest in the influences of Christian 
faith in the world in every age. Considering what 
the Christian doctrine is, can we believe that Jesus 
could still hold sway in the faith of men if no an- 
swer had come to any soul through trust in his 
name? If the burdened sinner had always come to 
him in vain; if the struggling, tempted soul had 
found in him no strength, would the world believe 
on him after the weary struggle of twenty cen- 
turies? 

Faith in Buddha or Confucius or Mohammed 
may remain, for the faith in these is a faith in sys- 



Jesus of Nazareth — The Resurrection. 251 

terns of doctrine. It is, and only claims to be, a 
theoretical faith. The faith in Jesus as a living Sav- 
iour, revealing himself in saving power to his own, 
is far different, and provides in itself for its own 
refutation and confusion if ever there ceases to be 
the demonstration of what it promises. 

Jesus is present with us still, revealing his di- 
vine power. He touches the leprous clean. He 
opens the eyes of the blind. He calls the dead 
from their graves. Moral strength and life which 
no mere faith of doctrine can impart, and no mere 
strength of will attain, attest the presence and 
work of Christ in the world. It is to the faith that 
is voiced in prayer that these blessings are given. 
They are verifications of Jesus' claims to such as 
put his claims to the test, according to his prom- 
ises. Jesus is standing in the midst of our suffer- 
ing, dying humanity, saying, "I am come that they 
might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly.'' 



CHAPTER XXL 
The Fulfillment of Our Hopes. 

The crowning evidence that the religion of the 
Bible is from God is its self-verifying character. 
Without recapitulation of the arguments which 
we have presented under that head, we will say here 
that the doctrine that there is a God, the Creator 
and Ruler of all things, reason requires us to accept 
as the last term of a mental equation. If we elimi- 
nate this, there is no rational view of things exist- 
ing; no purpose or end in the stupendous fabric of 
the universe; no meaning in the aspirations and 
wants of man. 

He who believes that God is a moral governor, 
having a purpose in man's creation and career, will 
be prepared to believe that he has given to man a 
revelation of his will, and that such a revelation 
could only be made manifest by supernatural cir- 
cumstances. 

Taking up the religion of the Bible in itself, we 
find that it stands preeminent in excellence above 
all other religious systems, both in the consistency 
of its doctrines and the higher tone of its ethics. 
It is this preeminence, always apparent in the study 
of comparative religions, and verified in its effects 
upon individual life, that has given the religion of 
the Bible intrinsic force to overthrow other sys- 
( 2 5 2 ) 



The Fulfillment of Our Hofes* 253 

terns and abide the changes and the progress of all 
past time, still strengthening its hold upon the 
faith and conscience of the world. The promise 
made to Abraham, that all the world should be 
blessed in his seed, implied the ultimate world-tri- 
umph of the religion which he represented. His- 
tory, since Abraham's day, has constantly wit- 
nessed progress toward the fulfillment of this prom- 
ise, and the belief that it shall be fully accomplished 
was never so widespread, nor appeared so well 
founded, as now. 

The symbols of the early worship of the He- 
brews were prophetic of spiritual unfoldings, and 
the early theocratic government suggestive of an 
ideal to be realized under the reign of Messiah. 
This was clearly the conception of the prophets, 
who saw the end of all types and emblems in the 
fuller revelations of a new dispensation. Between 
the Old and the New there is continuity and unity. 
The Christ who should come to fulfill all spiritual 
hopes and needs, to be a Saviour of Jews and Gen- 
tiles, and to establish the reign of heaven upon 
earth, was the focal point to which the light of 
prophecy was converged. 

As for Jesus Christ, we have seen that he made 
himself the subject and center of his teachings. He 
set himself in the light of prophecy as the Messiah, 
whom the prophets had foretold should come. So 
far from the mythical development of a divine per- 
son out of the character of Jesus of Nazareth being 



254 Foundations of Faith. 

supposable — a process requiring centuries — Jesus 
clearly challenged in his life and work every test 
of divine character, and in his deeds and words laid 
the foundation of that faith which has ever since 
his day exalted him as the only begotten Son of 
God, the Christ of the prophets, and the Redeemer 
and Saviour of the world. 

In his own personality Jesus appears without a 
companion among men. Appearing as a Jew in 
the time of Tiberius, when fear and wrong, added 
to the impulses of a proud and sensitive nature, 
had made the Jew narrow beyond his wont, we 
might almost say fierce and bitter against the 
world, Jesus exhibited sympathies and aims which 
were free from any touch of provincialism or na- 
tional prejudice. His life and teaching belonged to 
humanity; and, as his apostle Paul interpreted 
him, "in Christ Jesus was neither Greek nor Jew, 
circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scyth- 
ian, bond nor free. ,, There were none too low for 
Jesus' compassion and help, none too sinful to 
hear from him the words of love and hope. The 
Gentile obtained his favor as well as the Jew. The 
Syrophoenician woman was counted an example 
of true faith in God above any in Israel. Jesus de- 
clared that many should "come from the east and 
the west and sit down with Abraham and Isaac 
and Jacob in the kingdom of God," while the Jews, 
who claimed to be the children of the kingdom, 
should be cast out. 



The Fulfillment of Our Hojyes. 255 

In his tenderness Jesus exhibited a courage 
never equaled. It was the great, the proud, the 
rulers of the people whom he rebuked. It was 
when, humanly speaking, he was in their power 
that he hurled against them the most withering 
rebukes and denunciations. He ignored the nar- 
row prejudices of his people. He set aside the 
teachings of the scribes and Pharisees concern- 
ing Messiah's character and kingdom. He gave 
no place to the hatred of the Jew for his Roman 
oppressor. He charged the leaders of the Church 
with self-seeking and hypocrisy. He turned 
against himself, knowingly and deliberately, ev- 
ery conventional prejudice and every motive of 
self-interest. He saw, as the result of it all, the 
tragedy upon Mount Calvary, and moved toward 
it with unfaltering step — a sacrifice for all humanity 
in his assertion of the claims and privileges of all 
men before God, as against the usurpations of hu- 
man pride and ambition. In that last struggle he 
appears as the representative of the divine com- 
passion and purpose toward all men, arrayed 
against the powers of sin — the kingdom of heaven 
against the kingdom of darkness; and from that 
struggle he emerged immaculate, divine, and for- 
ever victorious in the faith of the world. Even as 
he said, 'The prince of this world cometh, and hath 
nothing in me." 

A character always impressed upon us in Jesus' 
life — a life which we must view as the one supreme 



256 Foundations of Faith. 

conflict of love and truth against the power of sin 
in the world — is its serenit}\ Jesus is ever calm. 
There appears in his mind and spirit no conflict. 
He seems not even to plan his work. He writes 
nothing, organizes nothing. He exhibits no alter- 
nations of fear and hope. He apologizes for noth- 
ing, corrects and explains nothing in his past. He 
admits no shadow of doubt upon his path, no pos- 
sibilitv of error in his teachings, no chance for fail- 
ure and disappointment to them who trust in him. 
Care and worry, as known to common men, were 
unknown to him. He was ever shrined in an atmos- 
phere of repose. His goodness was spontaneous, 
above conventionalities and circumstances of time 
and place, yet ever beautifully adjusted to these 
conditions. He appeared upon a moral plane 
above the mists and shadows of our sin-cursed 
world. And yet, we see no struggling up to that 
supernal height. He appears upon it as one who 
descended from above, arrayed in the light of 
heaven, even as he was seen upon the mount of 
transfiguration, adumbrating the glory and king- 
dom which he has taught us to look for as no 
"cunningly devised fable. " 

Considered in himself directly, Jesus of Nazareth 
fulfills all that could be conceived of God manifest 
in the flesh. But his character appears so far above 
all human inventions, and is so rounded out from 
so many sources and testimonies, which are still 
perfectly accordant, and so sustained by words and 



The Fulfillment of Our Hopes. 257 

actions inimitable, attributed to him, and by re- 
sults flowing from him, that it is impossible that 
he should be reckoned, in any sense, an ideal crea- 
tion. In the clear white light of history and fact, 
he stands before the view of the world, "the chiefest 
among ten thousand,'' the one "altogether lovely." 

But how has Jesus fulfilled his promise to the 
world? 

In personal experience he has been a Saviour 
to them who trusted in him. The change which 
has come to them has not been ideal. By believing, 
they have not simply passed into a realm of visions, 
alluring to fancy, and followed lights which led to 
nothing. They have "passed from death unto life." 
The most degrading and terrible bondage to car- 
nality has been broken off. Life has felt the influx 
of regenerating power, in new affections and hopes. 
Illustrious examples of virtue have been produced 
from men and women erstwhile bound in the thrall- 
dom of every vice. The witnesses of this trans- 
formation have been continued, and in increasing 
numbers, through every age since Jesus was upon 
earth. To-day they are a mighty mutitude, like 
that host which the apostle saw in his heavenly 
vision, singing, "Thou hast redeemed us to God by 
thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and 
people, and nation." Millions of men and women, 
by faith in Jesus, are now walking in the light of a 
divine life, in closest fellowship with the spiritual 
i7 



258 Foundations of Faith. 

world, and sustained amid earthly losses and trials 
by a power from above. 

The world at large has felt the power of Jesus' 
life and death as an uplift to humanity. Hence 
come higher conceptions of the possibilities of 
man's nature, and stronger confidence in the over- 
watching care and unfailing compassion of our 
God. The thought of immortality is more strong- 
ly grasped. The relation of all men to the great 
Father is better understood, and thus power is giv- 
en to rise above the world and "lay hold on eternal 
life," and man accepts as the supreme law of his 
life love to God and all mankind. 

From the influence of Jesus the world is being 
quickened into new life. The impulse and spring 
of modern civilization is the Christian religion, 
which is represented, not merely in the organized 
Church, but in law, literature, social order, and pub- 
lic institutions. 

To the influence of Christ is due the overthrow 
of tyranny, the liberation of slaves, the elevation 
of woman, the development of benevolence 
through so many institutions and agencies, the es- 
tablishment of international law, the extension of 
the spirit of brotherhood, the recognition of the 
equal rights of man. 

While ecclesiastical power, misguided, has, at 
times, stood in the path of progress, yet the very 
spirit and potency of the gospel of Christ made 
progress inevitable, in spite of this blind opposi- 



The Fulfillment of Our Hopes. 259 

tion. If the Church undertook to shut the human 
mind within the barriers of creed, the spirit of 
Christianity demanded liberty of conscience. If 
intolerant bigots, holding authority in the Church, 
put men to death for their religious convictions, 
the spirit of Christianity still nurtured men ready 
to become martyrs for conscience sake. In all this 
Christ himself was asserting his power, breaking 
asunder the bands with which human selfishness 
and ignorance would fetter him, and beyond these 
conventional barriers reaching forth to control the 
consciences and lives of all men. 

Christianity is our inspiration for the future. Its 
possibilities are not exhausted, nor its force weak- 
ened; nor yet has it brought us to the promised 
goal. Its promise is to deliver mankind from op- 
pression, to deliver the human mind from degrad- 
ing error, and to deliver human life from the sway 
of beastly passions. Its triumphs advance toward 
this consummation. By virtue of what it has ac- 
complished, it promises that each coming genera- 
tion shall stand upon a higher plane of intelligence, 
power, and moral excellence. 

A religion which thus fulfills the needs and 
hopes of man is not a false religion. It makes good 
its promise of redemption and salvation. That 
which answers man's highest need is to man the 
highest truth. That which meets the wants of 
man's nature represents to him the will and pur- 
pose of his Creator. The true religion reconciles 



260 Foundations of Faith. 

man to his Maker and opens the way for divine 
influences and blessings upon his life. 

Jesus is the Saviour of men, the Saviour to whom 
the old dispensation pointed, and for whom it pre- 
pared the way. He is our Saviour from sin, from 
moral helplessness, and from the fear of death. He 
is the Saviour of the nations, the light of all time, 
the Alpha and Omega of our hopes. In the elo- 
quent language of Dr. Richard S. Storrs, we would 
close this chapter and this volume: 

"Amid whatever changes of arts, letters, institu- 
tions, empires, one figure remains supreme in his- 
tory. It is that of the Man whom John baptized, 
whom Pilate crucified; who built no capital, led 
no army, wrote no volume; who seemed to the 
principal persons of his time to have fitly closed 
a restless life in an ignoble death; but who named 
himself, and who now is named in all the written 
languages of mankind, the Son of God. 

"The brilliant names of orators, soldiers, skillful 
inventors, sagacious statesmen, gradually fade in 
the vividness of their luster as other generations 
follow that to which their genius was first exhib- 
ited. But the name of Jesus continues to com- 
mand, and ever more widely, the love, the rever- 
ence, the obedience of mankind. Careers so splen- 
did in comparison of his, and so rich in governing 
forces, that to rank his beside them would have 
looked to the cultivated men of his time like a 
balancing of Nazareth against the Rome of Au- 



The Fulfillment of Onr Hopes. 261 

gustus, have been lost from sight and even from 
recollection, as the race has moved from them 
across the expanse of peaceful or stormy years; 
but his career remains always in sight, like the star 
which shines in its serene heights, when the light- 
house lamp, which near at hand glittered more 
brightly, has sunk beneath the lifting horizon. 
More than sixty generations of men, vexed with 
thought, burdened with cares, and each accom- 
plishing, wearily or victoriously, its office in the 
world, have lived and wrought, and passed away, 
since the young child Jesus lay on his mother's 
breast at Bethlehem; yet they are to-day more 
numerous in the world, and more influential than 
ever before, who turn with profoundly attentive 
minds, because with profoundly adoring hearts, to 
consider what he was, and to ponder the things 
which he said and did. This fact is susceptible of 
no explanation which does not discredit human na- 
ture itself, unless we clearly accept this Man — so 
humble in his circumstances, but in his influences 
so peerless and universal — as what he claimed to 
be, Immanuel — God with us. The standing mir- 
acle/ as Coleridge describes it, 'of a Christendom 
commensurate and almost synonymous with the 
civilized world/ not only compensates for the nec- 
essary evanescence of some evidence for the gos- 
pel, enjoyed by the primitive Christians, but it sup- 
plies a demonstration of the divinity revealed 
through humanity in the person of the Lord, than 



262 Foundations of Faith* 

which the wonders of wisdom and power related 
of him by those who saw them were not more sig- 
nal or convincing." 

"Now the God of peace, that brought again 
from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd 
of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting 
covenant, make you perfect in every good work, 
to do his will, working in you that which is well- 
pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to 
whom be glory forever and ever. Amen." 



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